“Modern technology is putting new tools in the hands of Hawaii’s farmers — tools that look a lot like the platforms and apps that can be found on the average smartphone or laptop,” writes Anna Hrushka, reporter for Pacific Business News. The January 20, 2017 print issue included a spread on “The New Wave of Farming,” and Smart Yields was featured.
Through sensors, Smart Yields enables farmers to collect data on water, soil and air conditions, giving them the ability to make more precise farming decisions.
Rogers said having access to the necessary information that can influence those decisions gives smaller farmers the ability to compete with larger, out-of-state farms.
“Precision agriculture is how we’re going to be competitive in the future,” he said. “Data and digital, basically, is something that destroys the economy of scale. You have the economy of scale because you need to bulk purchase things, or bulk treat things. It becomes cheaper. But as soon as we have this model that we have of distributed manufacturing, it just means that it’s cheaper to do smaller scale things and still be competitive with the big scale guys.”
Read the full article here: http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2017/01/20/the-new-wave-of-farming.html
