The Fertile Common Ground Between Technology and Agriculture

MIN READAug 8, 2016 | 09:15 GMT

Drones are just one of many technologies whose use in the agricultural sector could cut operation costs and improve yields, helping a growing global population with shrinking resources to cultivate more food with fewer inputs.

(JEAN PIERRE MULLER/AFP/Getty Images)

At first glance, Silicon Valley and the vast cornfields of the U.S. Midwest may appear to have little in common. But a growing relationship between big data and agriculture is poised to improve yields, reduce raw material use and decrease production costs. Over the past year, the precision agriculture industry, which has pioneered the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and robotics to increase data collection and efficiency in agriculture, has continued to expand in the United States and around the world. As drone use in agriculture becomes even more prevalent and new achievements in machine learning and artificial intelligence are made, high technologies -- the internet of things, big data, robotics and artificial intelligence -- will overlap with agriculture more and more....