With targeted crop management advice, big data is assisting agriculture to become more productive and waste-free.
FREMONT, CA: Privacy is an increasing issue in the digital era.
Social media businesses have used big data to optimize factory performance, identify people at risk for specific health disorders, and customize the material that shows on your screen. At the same time, it has raised worries about improper consumer manipulation using collected data. No exception is made in agriculture. Precision agriculture is a prime example of how big data can be beneficial and detrimental. In order to boost productivity with less land, crop yields must be increased to keep up with population growth and cropland expansion.
Although there are certain issues, precision agriculture has the potential to promote both economic and environmental sustainability. Instead of treating agricultural land as a single data point, precision agriculture, known as site-specific crop management or even smart farming, treats it as a collection of microsites. It means that treatments are customized so that just the amount required for the crop is utilized instead of utilizing the same amount of water, fertilizer, and pesticide on every crop.
Rigid automation hampers change
Information gathered at each microsite determines that an area with more moist soil will require less water than one with drier soil. Sensors on farm equipment like tractors or harvesters are frequently used to gather this data in the field. With that knowledge, fully automated machinery can change the distribution of seeds or fertilizer and focus the usage of pesticides.
Concern about privacy
However, big data has a new application as giant agriculture equipment firms have begun combining data from many sources in the cloud to produce more precise forecasts. Although this has the potential to boost profitability, there is rising worry around the privacy of farmer data. While big data can increase productivity, it also has a negative side that is carefully examined to solve complex problems like food security and climate change. Addressing farmers' privacy concerns is crucial in conjunction with the broad adoption of precision agriculture.