
This hard land: From cotton gin, to combine harvester, to computer vision (by way of The Boss)
Farming is hard. It always has been. There is a song called This Hard Land by Bruce Springsteen, rock’s great chronicler of every-day struggle in modern America, which captures something …

IBM puts farm data and weather data into AI mixer to sharpen-up agriculture
IBM has released a set of analytics tools that combine weather data and farm data in its Watson machine-learning engine to give farmers insights about planning, plowing, planting, spraying and …

John Deere talks computer vision and the ultimate in farm gadgetry
People don’t get how sophisticated farmers are, says Lane Arthur, director of digital solutions at John Deere, the US maker of industrial equipment and machinery. “They don’t see the technology …

Two million smart farms, 36 million smart cows by 2024, says new report
Two million farms and 36 million cattle will be connected to the internet by low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks, and other technologies, by 2024. This is the calculation from analyst house …

Editorial Report | Making Industry Smarter Series – Connecting Agriculture
The digital transformation of the agricultural sector – a review of the strategies, technologies and stakes in play as farmers seek more sustainable and competitive ways to feed the world.

Four cases of Vodafone’s local know-how in smart farming
Vodafone’s approach to the digital transformation of industry prioritises certain ‘vertical’ markets. Agriculture is not among them. Instead, it sees greater opportunity at group level in the automotive, insurance, buildings, …

Seeds, soil and sensors – the story of Sensoterra
Three per cent of the world’s water is accessible freshwater. Of that, 70 per cent of the freshwater consumed is used in the agricultural industry – the largest consumer of …

Smart aquaculture – and the Mexican method (Reader Forum)
With populations in the developing world continuing to grow, the need to find new ways to satisfy increased demand for access to food has never been greater. In order to …

Ditching the high fibre diet: how a network-of-networks will help smart farming (Reader Forum)
The pressure food producers face to digitally transform is mounting. With a rapidly growing population, farms find themselves at a decisive moment in their ability to continue to produce enough …

Nokia, TIM join agri-tech alliance to bring automation and intel to farmers in Brazil
Finnish vendor Nokia and Italian operator Telecom Italia have joined with six international agri-tech firms on a smart agriculture initiative, ConectarAGRO, that seeks to bring connectivity, automation and intelligence to …