COLORADO: Precision Farming With The Help of Technology - By The Numbers
By Michael Cox Special to the Montrose Daily Press
August 22, 2019
Soozie and Steve Arnold pose with part of their hydroponic Garden at the Eatin’ Greens farm. The system they use is considered precision farming. (Michael Cox/ Special to the Montrose Daily Press)
Steve and Soozie Arnold used to run cattle on 30,000 acres in the San Juans. Now, they grow butter lettuce and other delicious greens on three acres just north of Spring Creek Road near Montrose.
They do it hydroponically. Steve can irrigate his crops from his smart phone. Soozie sells greens and things at the farmers' markets, Gold's Gym, several restaurants, and to other customers, taking plastic payment and processing it with The Square on her phone. She counts the beans on QuickBooks. Steve reads the Wall Street Journal online, which is where he found out about the growing system they use.
Without the internet, broadband or otherwise, life would not be the same for small and large ag operations alike. The Arnolds are part of the precision farming movement. It’s farming and ranching with much less guess work and fewer surprises. Growers with a few acres, like the Arnolds, and cattle outfits, like the one Steve used to run, are getting more yield, using less water and taking fewer chances because they have the internet and tools like phoning in your irrigation.
Soozie Arnold helps a Farmers Market customer “pick” her own greens from their hydroponic “farm field.”
(Michael Cox/ Special to the montrose Daily Press)
No more root cellars
When the refrigerator replaced the root cellar and the icebox back in the 1930s, everything from the way farmers finished crops to the way consumers bought them changed for the better. That came about when the Rural Electrification Act set the stage for energy being delivered to rural farms and ranches.
“A similar shift is upon us with the advent of digital technology and next generation precision agriculture, resulting in increasing productivity with fewer inputs, better market access and healthier rural communities,” said Megan Nelson of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Nelson is all about pushing the idea of broadband for everybody. But what is broadband?
The dictionary definition is, “A high-capacity transmission technique using a wide range of frequencies, which enables a large number of messages to be communicated simultaneously.” In terms more of us can understand, it's like having a digital party line where everyone can talk at once and still get the message straight. In the unseen operations, the data — words, pictures, numbers, etc. — move at light speed in computer-assigned packets. The problem is the network that does this magic is not in place everywhere.
“Just recently the Federal Communications Commission admitted that the maps they have are wrong,” Nelson said, “We really donít know who has broadband available and who doesn’t.”
The FCC has promised to get the maps up-to-date as quickly as possible. In bureau speak that could be next year or the third June of 2021.