Smart Agriculture with Bowles Farming Co.

Posted by
Sandra Mueller

Smart Agriculture with Bowles Farming Co.

Danny Royer is the Vice President of Technology at Bowles Farming Company in the middle of California Central Valley. His job is integrating technology into the everyday things that are done on the farm. The farm is about 12,000 acres, producing about 21 different crops and irrigating mainly with subsurface drip irrigation. Currently Bowles Farming Company is in the middle of the planting season with crews planting and processing tomatoes and cotton. The cotton being grown on the farm is unique in the fact that they are using DNA tracing technology to create transparency throughout the supply chain on cotton fibers. Relative to IoT, sensors, modules and controllers are used throughout the farm to manage and maintain the many different facets of the farm. With all of these connected things, the biggest challenge is how to manage all of those connections.

Prevalence of Technology in Agriculture

Even though technology like this may seem to be something many farms have been using and are used to by now, in most cases and in the case of Bowles Farming Co., this is a very early adopter phase when it comes to utilizing tech and sensors. Even with them being in the top 5% of early adopters, there are many simple challenges regarding culture or current management. Smart agriculture is on the verge of a large boost in adoption. As time goes on people who are more used to the technology aspects will move into management positions at which point you will see the whole industry make that switch heavily toward smart applications. When it comes to managing food supply or energy using the IoT, a lot of the opportunity falls in the operations side of things regarding not only logistics, but relationships. The food system is deeply built on the relationships between buyers and sellers and because farmers are so focused on production, the relationships are offset due to hiring someone else. Danny believes we will see a shift in the relationship between the broker and the buyer and the supplier, and you will see closer relationships between the buyer and producer. The ability to track things from every step of the supply chain provides a large level of transparency that will be beneficial to consumers and will be interesting to see how they react to it.

Smart Agriculture Applications

On the farm some of the biggest steps being done to improve productivity and sustainability involves the IoT. When it comes to water, the farm has already done a very good job of staying ahead of the curve and has been sort of forced to, due to being located in California. But a big opportunity they are moving toward is the timing and management of irrigation with different types of sensors and drone or satellite imagery to put together an algorithm to control the water flow. Once this data is collected you need a control mechanism and a validation mechanism to control what turns on and what turns off. This is just one of the many big changes toward IoT technology that is improving the way Bowles Farming Company produces product and saves money. To hear more agriculture applications of IoT, listen to this episode of Real World of IoT with Danny Royer.

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