California is called Salad bowl of the world. The very first generation of California tech pioneers haven't worked to develop a technical strategy for the coming generations; they've struggled to "integrate" farming and technology. Salinas is still the place for innovation in agricultural technology - implementing cloud computing, robotics and IoT for farming. The farmers in California use laptops and smartphones to track the progress through wireless communication. This gave the farmers an efficient way to unleash the potency of the land for better productivity.
Western Growers is the trade group that represents farmers in California, Arizona and Colorado, which is represented by Hank Giclas. In his opinion, the shift from wired form of communication to that of wireless has held great advantage in the overall production.
One of the most fundamental shifts has been wireless access to the Internet and the cloud. It gives farmers much greater insight into their operations, and they’re able to find efficiency and optimize like never before. I’m really interested in the rapid shifts in sensing technology. There’s a whole new wave of precision farming that’s coming to the fresh produce sector through sensor technology, and we need to sort that out. - Hank.
They are farming with the help of the sensors that measure different parameters affecting the crop. These parameters include precipitation, soil moisture, temperature, sunshine and wind. These parameters help the farmers to provide fertilisers to the crop in accurate quantities, that does not affect the quality of the farm. With the help of IoT, the farmers can estimate other factors or discover new factors that affect the crop. They can design the usage of fertilisers (whether natural fertilisers or chemical fertilisers) over a period of crop for better productivity.
As the climate and the natural resources in California support farming throughout the year, the crop can be yielded all the time. Utilising the drones to monitor the crop, automation for crop extraction and robotics for certain advantages have been a new trend that Western Growers have been following in the recent times.
Ag Solutions for 21st Century:
Ag Tech clusters are working on the challenges faced by farming through technology. The world population is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, the entire population needs to be fed. In Israel the Agricultural Research Organisation (ARO) is working on farming from deserts. As of now, ARO is mainly concentrated on water conservation with respect to the climatic changes, sustainability and food safety.
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