Precision agriculture : feeding the future
Abstract
Agriculture has faced its fair share of adversity. In the 1930's and 40's, it was the dust bowl. The 1980's Farm Crisis was a byproduct of overproduction, poor investments, and bad decisions made during the boom years of the late 1970's. As a result, farmers were pushed to the brink of bankruptcy and many lost their farms. In the wake of it all, strong leaders and devoted agriculturalists pulled through and rebuilt what was once broken. Although today's crisis differs in the sense that economic conditions have been relatively stable, agriculturalists are faced with their most daunting task yet. A little over 7.5 billion acres of arable land worldwide has done its best to feed roughly that same number of people in 2016. In the next 30 years, those same acres will be responsible for feeding about 9.5 billion people globally. How can today's farmer soften the burden of 2 billion more mouths to feed while retailers and food-chain entities breathe down their neck to create a healthier, more sustainable food source? The answer: precision agriculture.
Part of
Citation
Artifacts ; issue 15 (2017)
Rights
OpenAccess.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.