Sometimes farmers get a bum rap for being backwards hicks from the sticks but they have been historical reasonably quick to adopt technology to enhance their production. Have you been out to a farm lately as you much be surprised at how high tech farming has become or can be in the pursuit of maximum production and maximum quality at minimum cost. This drive is perhaps magnified by the number of corporations who have entered into the farming business. Perhaps its because farmers are the original ‘makers’ but some of the farms I’ve seen lately blow away other traditionally seen high tech industries in adoption of IoT and other technologies (who would guessed that even a granary bin could have gotten so high tech). Perhaps this is because of razor thin margins or critically declining resources or that other industries have become fat and lazy from obscene profits and under little pressure to innovate anymore, whatever but country bumpkin certainly doesn’t mean techno illiterate anymore.
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Yea, this is true. Farming is one industry that welcomes any and all technology that will show improved results. Esp since finding man power to do some of these farming jobs is hard enough.
I know a guy who used to work at NIST. He was one of the original developers of the algorithm that they use to combine all the clocks into UTC, and he was deeply involved in the GPS system.
He said that while at UC Boulder, they’d done tests using extremely accurate GPS systems and soil sensors, and adjusted fertilizers in real time as the machine ran over the fields, and they’d been able to show an order of magnitude gain in yields using this technology 