Anyone who is or knows a farmer or agricultural worker understands the passion and the challenge it is to grow healthy crops. You have so many cards in the deck stacked against you be it the biggest–weather, or a big problem that’s very small–bugs/pests, to the ever invasive Yuppie who bought a house out in the countryside to escape the city but is then mad they have to smell the success of growing food by helping it with manure and other fertilizers.
Technology has shown in the past to be a fantastic hand up on the farmer from the earliest hand-carried tools, to the agricultural revolution that occurred in the 1800s thanks to the ingenious work of John Deere and others in implement equipment. Computer technology is now the new buzz in agriculture on how it can help the farmer grow better, more efficiently, while maintaining a profit without destroying or eroding the land. Data collection is where it lies currently and some of the problems that are slowing it down.
One of the major hurdles that must be tackled aside from the aforementioned weather/pests, would be the act of data. If the data is proprietary and restrictive, there will be little input provided by the main beneficiary but the farmer themselves won’t bother accessing something that could help him/her if it’s cost is beyond any benefit. Open data will be a highly sought after commodity, such as highlighted in this NASA article.
But data is just one part of the larger puzzle of course. Open data will be fantastic but if its without usefulness to the farmer or its unable to be fit into or translated into their needs, it will be useless and a drain upon resources. A big issue with this is the technology versus knowledge gap. If your end-user is 65+ and hasn’t ever used a computer before, giving him an iPad full of programs and some half-baked user manuals is going to see that machine thrown into the corner before the second use. But if you invest in the proper level of education and technology for the end user, it can begin to pay off time invested. Which in the end, should hopefully assist the successful crop bounty.
T.W. Weepie 