Ag tech is working to improve farming with the help of AI, IoT, computer vision and more

Feeding the world when there are limits to land, resources and skilled labor, exerts pressures on farmers to increase crop yields. In the past, farmers did this by rotating crops, fertilizing fields, using pesticides and installing irrigation--but with weather conditions changing almost unpredictably, farmers need to take as much guesswork out of planning and harvesting crops as possible. "Farmers face a major challenge in having to feed a world population that will increase to 2 billion people over the next 30 years according to the United Nations and the USDA," said Zach Bonefas, senior staff engineer and automation technology leader, at John Deere. "They also must work through many variables inherent to farming, like changing weather conditions, variations in soil quality and the presence of pests, which can have a big impact on their ability to produce food. Creating predictability out of that variability is the key, and that's where technology comes in."