The Internet of Things Comes to the Farm: Growers connecting to a range of data at their fingertips.
Imagine a future in which farmers manage crops with the touch of a tablet. “I have this vision of what it would look like,” says Nadia Shakoor, senior research scientist at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Drones fly over fields, sending alerts at the first sign of insect pests. Robots roll past crops, identifying disease. Soil sensors trigger water to spray only where crops are parched. The farmer, tablet in hand, remains at the helm—without being so tethered to the land. Maybe farmers sit on porches, says Shakoor, or “they are on a beach in Florida, and they are monitoring their farm.”
