With the world’s populations rising and expected to increase
another two billion in the next thirty-five to forty years, food production
must increase by 60% to sustain this massive amount of people (UN Food and Agriculture
Org.). This article on BigData Startup’s
website highlights that John Deere has entered the realm of big data with the
introduction of new products.
John Deere has recently put sensors on their newest pieces of
equipment that helps decrease downtime of the equipment and decrease fuel
usage. It is also possible now to get up-to-date data on weather, soil
conditions, and crop features to be communicated directly through the equipment
to farmers. This allows for the users to know the best locations and times to
harvest their crops in order to maximize the productivity and efficiency of
their land.
While not using as many data points as corporations such as
Wal-Mart or Amazon, they are working on increasing their data to process, because
more data generally equates to more uses and a more accurate analysis. In order
to do this John Deere is using the programming language R. Once R is used to
forecast information such as demand and crop yield, it then exports the
information to channels such as FarmSight, FarmSight Mobile Farm Manager, and
MyJohnDeere.com. The article states that FarmSight is used to increase
productivity by improving on three different areas; machine optimization, logistics,
and assisting in decision making. With John Deere keeping with the times, and investing in the possibilities in big data, their future looks promising.
At the very end of the article there is an interesting video made by John
Deere following a day in the life of a farmer with future John Deere technology.
Information from:
As the world continues to grow, there are so many things that need to become more advanced just to handle the vast amount of people. It is interesting that you bring up the point about the increased amount of crops that will be necessary to nurture these billions of people. It is something I have never thought about, and that is coming from a girl who likes to eat…. A lot. Farmers have been around, well, forever. Age-old farming methods are still used, but it is time to become more advanced as our world becomes more and more technological.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to find out a little more about just where this information comes from that is sent to the sensors on this new and improved John Deere equipment. The source that I was able to find some information on is MyJohnDeere.com. I went to the website to see what it was. They give four reasons as to why users should sign up: 1. Manage Your Machines, 2. Weather Predictions, 3. Easily Access Your Application (from anywhere), and 4. John Deere Financial. From what I understand, as a user of this website, farmers are able to view information that is important to them. The machines, then, will take this “important” information through their sensors and the farmers will be able to make better decisions with their machines that will allow for more productivity.
Another way that I saw that John Deere has considered to make more of an impact on crop productivity is by hiring agronomists. These agronomists would be helpful in a sense that they would know how to utilize the capabilities of MyJohnDeere.com and could make suggestions to the farmers. We have talked a lot in class about how we must be able to understand large datasets in order to make use out of them. Agronomists would be the ones to make sense of these large datasets so that they would be helpful. If Farmer Joe had this fancy John Deere tractor with sensors to help him produce more crops but didn’t know how to use it, how much good would that do?
If you want to read more about John Deere’s consideration of hiring agronomists, you can read some more about it at: http://www.agprofessional.com/newsletters/dealer-update/articles/Deere-dealers-could-hire-crop-consultants-160793005.html.
Other source: https://myjohndeere.deere.com/wps/portal/myjd/login?TYPE=33554433&REALMOID=06-b426fb65-1bee-101b-9f83-851565f80040&GUID=&SMAUTHREASON=0&METHOD=GET&SMAGENTNAME=$SM$MlHrPcDzI64EhJyTsz0bZg9O4ozvU07YAThUkg8KhA1xe%2fzNofYyZ2lCpoBgh4jL&TARGET=$SM$https%3a%2f%2fmyjohndeere%2edeere%2ecom%2fwps%2fmyportal%2fmyjd%2fmyjdDashboard