2019 Spring Farm Outlook

2019 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine Lincoln Daily News March 21, 2019 Page 25 adopter program. Chowdhary said the robot is expected to become available to farmers in three years or so, with some models costing “less than $5,000.” Despite a fear among some objectors, Chowdhary doesn’t believe large robots will replace human-operated machines for tasks like planting and harvest. “There are challenges in making robotic large equipment for farms…they’re big and can cause a lot of damage. It’s difficult to imagine that robotics will be a solution to harvesting large fields.” Additionally, while GPS technology is useful, robots cannot overcome every obstacle. “GPS can get the robot to know where it is on the farm, but you’re still dealing with a blind robot,” says Chowdhary. So what comes out of this increase in technology? The answer is valuable data. According to a report from Illinois Farmer Today, “data is the new oil — a currency, what people trade on,” said Jayma Appleby, Illinois Soybean Association’s director of industry relations. Data is part of modern decision-making, developing risk management strategies, and identifying more efficient processes; both at the individual and company level. For the moment, concerns over security and authenticity of data are of great importance for farmers. Coulter writes that there is a larger need for farmers to trust computer data gathered by machines. “People and processes, not technology, are the prime barriers to fuller integration of data.” Any machine on the farm would still need to know the difference between crops and weeds. Also, they would need to be able to make decisions about obstacles; things like puddles would be a problem. “GPS doesn’t give you the answers to any of these. Not only that, but GPS doesn’t really work that well under the canopy,” Chowdhary said. “As plants grow, they block the GPS signal because plants are 70 percent water, and water is not a friend of the GPS microwave signals.” As we move forward, both farmers and scientists are working on these concerns. In the next few years, we will hopefully be able to witness the drone and robotic results of many years of hard work and technological innovation. Continue 8