From the above discussion it is evident that Decision Support System for the Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) is now a very important type of DSS providing services to millions of farmers and food processing industries around the world. Even with such high importance it hasn’t been able to attract significant attention from the researchers a decade ago. But evolution of technologies and constant stress over modernization of agricultural methods by domain experts has shifted the paradigm. There has been a tremendous development and very significant research in past five years. Techniques like precision agriculture are now a very hot area for researchers. It is a technique where they utilize information technology to manage and plan crops. It is often categorized as agricultural management systems which employ advanced sensor technology and data from geo sensing satellites and crop history database to help farmers take better decisions. They are also used as monitoring tools to analyze crop and land data. Precision agriculture techniques also help farmers make better decision by providing them with forecasts on crop prediction, fertility, rainfall and market demand. They collaborate with geo sensing satellites for land resources exploration, environment monitoring and protection, city planning, crop production evaluation, disaster prevention and mitigation, experiment of spatial scientific.
There has been recent research on integrating agro systems with internet and other very important public databases. Going online can help farmers get real time data on temperature, humidity, wind, atmospheric and rainfall data. Information like Ph values of soil, humidity, electrical conductivity can be measured using sensor technologies employed....
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...echnology in the agricultural sector has created opportunities for farmers to apply data from remote sensing satellites to their crops. Data mining especially been very handy in helping systems make better suggestions to farmers based on the legacy data. Crop predictions and quality forecasts are now more accurate. Artificial intelligence and neural networks have been employed to build adaptive systems that teach themselves from the results entered by the farmers. The systems are now “situation-aware”.
There has also been lot of research in building systems that can monitor and investigate soil fertility and nutrition levels. Soil fertility data with dynamic, spatial and temporal characteristics of soil are fed to the systems which then use data mining techniques to come to analyze and diagnose soil problems. Such information can be very critical for success of crop.
As Jensen points out, farming and industry accounts for the vast majority of total water usage in the world (477). The increasingly scarce resource is a necessary ingredient when growing food. Technology continuously improves to make it easier for farmers to grow crops while using less water. Scientists at the University of Georgia utilize what they term “variable rate irrigation” to let farmers automate the current systems of irrigation to water only the crops that need it (Gies). This is an example of retrofitting current farms, but there is a new way of farming coming to cities that reuses practically all of its water and stakes claim much less acreage in the process. The future of agriculture belongs to vertical and urban farming. These types of farms reduce the use of water, chemicals (such as pesticides, herbicides and fungicides), soil and space (The Economist). These farms are so cutting edge that they are mostly in the experimental stages. Firms like Famgro farms are testing “stackable” farming systems that can scale with demand, even further reducing waste. Famgro’s stackable farms are ideal for cityscapes where land is at a premium; furthermore, reaping the added benefit of being in close proximity to the customers that they serve. Customers will enjoy high quality, fresh produce at only a slightly
Agriculture—it’s something that not very many people know much about. However, it is important for us to survive. Almost everything in our everyday lives is agriculture-related, from the food you eat to the clothes you wear.
By implementing new farming techniques provided with the new technological advances in machines we can see abundant harvest in even the poorest third world countries. For example, the Green Revolution has already showed admirable progress in the northern part of India ever since it took start in 1950. By 1997, northern India increased its grain production by 37 percent. This has proven that traditional farming methods are being rendered obsolete. And because by the year 2000, there will be half the land per person in developing countries as there was in 1970, we need to apply ultra-efficient methods to sustain the growing need. Not only does the Green Revolution enhances food output, it also preserves the environment.
Adapting agriculture to climate change is essential to increase resilience of farmers and other players in the food system. Adapting food systems to climate change will take long-term visioning, targeted research, development of new technologies and human capacity development. Resilience in the farmers’ level will involve implementation of sustainable farming practices, diversification and an increased emphasis on management of the entire agro-ecological
In this essay, the effects of climate change on agriculture and how to manage it shall be discussed. Climate change has and will greatly affect agriculture. As time progresses, the effects of climate change will worsen and become detrimental. Mendelsohn and Dinar (2009:1) state,” if future climate scenarios lead to a widespread reduction in food supply, there could be massive problems with hunger and starvation”. Climate change is a change in global climate patterns which is mainly caused by the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels. The writer chose this topic because climate change is a global problem that will pose a threat to people’s lives around the world and must be dealt with sooner than later.
...t support for realizing intensive, high-yield, high-quality, high-efficiency, ecological and safe agricultural, its main techniques such as RFID, photo acoustic electromagnetic sensors, "3S" technology, laser scanner, etc, can make great breakthrough on agricultural product safety, agriculture information transmission, intelligent detecting, intelligent
In Genesis 1:29, God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” From the beginning God has given us food for life. Plants, meats, trees, and fruits are offered to us as a means of sustenance from the very same God who made them long ago.
Our world is growing! Growing in population, that is, but the resources are staying the same. To help with the growth of the population that will be happening in the 21st century, science and agriculture need to work hand-in-hand. They need to stand together to make a break through together, to ensure that everyone has food on their plate. We need to work to have larger yields with the land we have.
Agriculture is considered to be one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Although at present, the overall impact of climate change on global scale agricultural productivity is not reliably estimated (Gornall et al., 2010). Many studies show serious implications on agricultural productivity for instance IFPRI(2009) projects that in South Asia by 2050 climate change will reduce production of rice, wheat and maize by 14%, 44% to 49% and 9%-19% respectively relative to no climate change situation. Historical temperature yield relationship indicates that at the global scale warming from 1981-2002 very likely offset some of the yield gains from technology advances, rising CO2 and other non climatic factors (Lobell and Field, 2007).
The backbone of a stable nation, socially and politically, is agriculture. Agriculture is the largest sector that provides a nation with food and employment. Agriculture is currently being affected by climate change and at the same time it is also a contributor to climate change. The drastic elevations in climate change started from the mid to late 20th century and they have been increasing since then (Boisvenue & Running 2006). Climate change is affecting agriculture by interfering with the efficiency of crop production. Agriculture is facing droughts, flooding, sea level elevations, natural disasters, and health hazards for employees. All of these exponents lead to crop failure that creates famines and food prices to rise. On the other side, agriculture is also contributing to climate change through their output of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints. These are caused by the activities that agriculture engages with such as breeding of livestock, ploughing of fields, deforestation, and the use of pesticides and other agrochemicals. Climate change affects countries differently, mainly due to their ability to adapt and their geographical location. Canada and Russia benefit from the changes in climate while Sudan and Bangladesh are affected negatively, struggling to adapt. Agriculture and climate change are interrelated processes that exist mutually making it harder to reduce one without affecting the other.
People have depended on agriculture for years as the primary source of getting food. We have developed all kinds of ways to manipulate nature so what we can produce higher yield crops, more nutritious crops, bigger crops, crops that withstand cold, and farming equipment that allows us to manufacture these crops with relative ease. Why then are there five billion people being malnourished and forty thousand children dying each day from hunger? It seems as though world hunger is more a result of the lack of distributing the food properly than the lack of quantity. agriculture has turned into a high profit business and biotech companies like Monsanto are constantly trying to come up with better and more efficient ways of farming. Are they doing this to try to solve the world hunger crisis, or merely to make a profit?
The growth of the world’s population has led to a growth in animal agriculture, because as population grows, the need for food does as well. Animal agriculture is the use of animal farms to produce animal products that are then consumed by the general public. As agribusiness expands, issues such as the need for farm insurance and animal rights have received more awareness. Modern day industrialism is being applied to animal agriculture in developed nations such as the United States and Canada. Farm Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on research in agribusiness and improving the economy through agriculture, claims that “the North American livestock industry is expected to
The Ancient world was in demand of technology as it saw a rise in complications to the world generation after generation. One very important form of rise in technology was in agriculture. The Agricultural Revolution saw a number of inventions in Medieval Europe. It saw the introduction of tools like the Heavy plough, the harrow and the mills to name a few. They also came up with new techniques in farming. These inventions and changes had a huge impact on Medieval Europe. It lead to more jobs and also more produce which eventually lead to more income.
Soil is the most important non-renewable resource on any farm. Healthy soil is key to a good
Organic farming has mushroomed drastically in importance and influence worldwide from its modest beginnings in the first half of the last century. Organic farming is production of food and livestock without the use of herbicides, pesticides, weedicides, fertilizers or genetically modified organism and use natural resources such as manure and compost instead. In other words, it is a production system which maintains the quality of soil ecosystem as well as human beings. According to IOWA State University, “the chemicals were not used for farming before World War 2. A number of munitions used in farming have contributed to field of agriculture. For instance, ammonium nitrate used as ammonium nitrate fertilizer”.