When It Comes To Tech, These Rice Farmers Are Outstanding In Their Field
Sep 15, 2019, 09:28am
Andrew Wight
Dust and noise from a passing rice harvester swirl around Colombian rice farmer Campo Elias Urrutia as he tells of a coming rice doomsday – easing of trade restrictions from a US trade deal means cheap US rice will likely start to pour into Colombia in the next three years.
But high-tech help is close by: Campo Elias is standing next to high tech sensors measuring carbon dioxide, methane, solar radiation and meteorological data – part of a project to make Colombian rice price-competitive with cheap imports.
Rice is a vital Colombian staple and it is now the key crop of central Colombia's tropical grassland plains – Los Llanos. In 2007, 461,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) of rice were sown in Colombia for an output of 2.5 million metric tonnes (2.75 million short tons).
Facing the threat of reduced yields from climate change, cheap imports and other challenges, the Colombian Rice Grower’s Federation, FedeArroz, has teamed up with a consortium of scientific institutions like Rothamsted Research and private companies to develop a platform called the Ecological Production Management Information System – EcoProMIS.
A combination of satellites, drones, handheld devices, IOT weather stations, crop inspections and farmer interviews all feed into the system, where the data is crunched by machine learning, AI and crop modelling.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewwight/2019/09/15/when-it-comes-to-tech-these-rice-farmers-are-outstanding-in-their-field/#63298a36372e
Just noticed there are little white birds following the harvesting machine. Looks as if they are there to pick up rice the machine leaves on the ground! It would be logical to imagine they do that, too, behind other machines harvesting other pieces of grains elsewhere. Who knew?
They are outstanding in the farmer's field, too!
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