A Roadmap to Better Decision Making

The nation’s largest retailer announced yesterday that it is investing in indoor vertical farming company "Plenty", a San Francisco-based startup, uses indoor warehouse facilities in California to house rows of hydroponic towers to grow leafy greens like lettuce, kale, and arugula. The operation incorporates engineering, software and “sustainable crop science” to grow several crops on one platform at “unprecedented speed,” ...
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Hormel Foods is probably most famous for its novel canned meat product "SPAM" which gained worldwide popularity during World War II. The company, founded by George A. Hormel in 1891, had a long history of innovation before that product made them a household name, though, guided by Hormel's business mantra, “Originate, don't imitate." By the early twentieth century, his company ...
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Texas A&M's AgriLife Research scientists just released a new study showing how "bioenergy sorghum "could be a huge player in removing larger amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and putting more carbon back in our soils. In fact, research is showing the crop can improve soil fertility and potentially earn carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The research ...
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You can think of Agtonomy as a hybrid autonomy and tele-assist service platform that turns tractors and other equipment into autonomous machines using a robust sensor suite and custom software stack to enable remote modes of operation focused on lowering the cost of repetitive tasks such as mowing, spraying, and precision weeding. Just last September the company received $4 million in ...
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Ag insiders have been warning for months that producers could face an unprecedented chemical shortage in the 2021/22 growing season. Unfortunately, the warnings have not subsided. If anything, they have grown more urgent as supply issues for the two most popular herbicides - glyphosate (Roundup, others) and glufosinate (Liberty, others) fail to subside. Where the herbicides are available, prices have ...
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As the U.S. rangeland cattle industry was coming into its own around the mid-1800s, the herds of the American West faced untold number of threats as they were herded across the open plains. One of the biggest was a disease that many livestock farmers are likely familiar with to this day - blackleg. Between 1870 and the early 1990s, ranchers ...
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Greeneye Technology, founded in 2017 by three veterans of Israel’s elite Sheldag commando unit, is using artificial intelligence to enable precision spraying technology that can not only distinguish between crops and weeds, but also classify weeds down to the species level. CEO of the Israel-based company, Nadav Bocher believes there are more effective ways to apply herbicides through precision spraying, ...
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While organic soybeans are a hot commodity, our friends from Mercaris reported that the domestic organic corn market finished the year strong with prices recovering from last year’s dips. Production reached a +9% year-over-year increase with harvests estimated to reach 49.5 million bushels. Mercaris noted that US organic corn producers are expecting to expand their crop production by 4%. The ...
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Humans have been manipulating the genetic code of plants for thousands of years. Early farmers adopted cross-breeding methods to modify various plants to produce more desirable traits. Traditional breeding techniques can take many years to develop the sought after changes, however, and often with mixed results. In the 1970s, agriculture was changed forever when scientists discovered a way to make ...
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Shifts and changes in climate can prove to be catastrophic for crop production. In an effort to combat the potential complications, a team of researchers is trying to optimize photosynthesis, the natural process all plants use to convert sunlight into energy and yields. The ultimate goal of the project, dubbed "Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency," or RIPE, is to engineer crop ...
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