“The leading-edge trend in farming was precision agriculture. The future is ‘prescription’ agriculture,” said Robert Tse, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) California innovation director and former Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) deputy secretary.
Ag tech developers, listen up. Tse leads ag tech events throughout California and is always in thoughtful exchanges with tech and ag trendsetters. He knows whereof he speaks.
What’s the difference between ag tech prescription and precision? You need to know this. Tse, continuing his medical metaphor, offers this short course:
“Sensor-based technology has enabled precision agriculture, which brings greater efficiency, higher yields, smaller environmental footprint to farming. But it is still farming ‘on the average’: The average amount of fertilizer, average amount of herbicide, average amount of water on a not average field.
“So why not write a prescription on the exact need of each square foot of soil? Instead of precision agriculture for the field, let’s take it to the micro square-foot level. Technology is creating Dr. Farmer,” Tse explained.
Tse and I met at his Davis office recently for a wonderfully speculative conversation, as we do every so often as longtime friends. It’s recounted in this and the next blog — as a former print journalist, I took extensive notes.
What do ag tech developers need to understand?
“Prescription farming represents the specialized aggregation of the advances of silicon chip-based farm technology, data analytics, ag science and mechanics. From the sensor-laden tractor that can drop a prescription formula of the right seed, to the micro-irrigation system that can apply the exact dosage of water, fertilizer, medicines (a.k.a. herbicide, pesticide and other inputs) at the exactly the right time matched to the soil type and microclimate of each square foot of land.”
(You really should read that one more time.)
“It’s taking the doctor’s prescription from individuals to plants. This is the technology-oriented sustainable agriculture of the future,” Tse said.
Is the patient (plant and soil) hot or cold, dry or wet, subject to disease? Real-time data analytics will assess and prescribe a response. No need to treat the entire field if the disease is only in one corner of the plot. You would not drench a person in iodine to treat a cut finger; and likewise there’s no reason to drench the entire field.
There are now leaf sensors that can read which side of a plant is stressed, Tse said, invoking his tech wizard’s grin that comes from ideation with federal colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, state friends at University of California and farmers.
The prescription for ag tech developers is now changing 180 degrees, Tse said: “Data analytics was one direction — assessing data from the farm.” Now you can/must enable the coordination of external macro-data at the micro level with the on-farm data. It’s a mix of on-farm and external earth science data, plus real-time application.”
Much more is rapidly evolving, he continued even plants are a growth industry. Crop scientists are developing new plant varieties better able to flourish in climate changing conditions. Olive and cherry varieties, for example, are being designed to accommodate more adverse climates and mechanization.
Or take the small, but increasingly popular, pistachio. Prescription agriculture began with the 2015 pistachio crop, he said, which fooled even the growers.
Find out how and what changed in 2016, and what the near future bodes, in my next blog.
