This week I dove into my first situated context: precision agriculture in California. Through this process I created an Actor-Network map: This really helped to organize my thoughts around California agriculture and got me to think about several actors and relationships that I need to research further. A big actor that has currently been mostly absent […]
Assessing the Impacts of Autonomous Technology in Agricultural Systems
Background For this project, autonomous technology, or artificial intelligence (AI), is described as “systems in which the designer has not predetermined the responses to every condition. Such systems are capable of surprising their designers and behaving in unexpected ways” (Omohundro 2014). This technology is attractive, especially in militaristic and economic contexts, because of the ability […]
Five Recently Funded AgTech Startups
Phytech – A leading, Israeli-based precision farming company. Specializes in sensors that attach directly to crops that work with soil moisture and microclimate sensors to provide the most accurate condition of a certain crop. It pairs these stats with yield improving suggestions for farmers directly provided through an easy-to-use app. The company recently closed Series A […]
Chinese Drone Maker Plows Into Agriculture – WSJ
NEWLEY PURNELL in Singapore and JACK NICAS in San Francisco November 26, 2015 China’s SZ DJI Technology Co., the world’s top consumer-drone maker, is setting its sights on the agriculture industry with the launch of a crop sprayer that will test whether farming is fertile ground for drone technology. DJI, which helped kick-start the global […]
Hi-tech agriculture is freeing the farmer from his fields | The Guardian
by John Vidal The big, blue 18-tonne New Holland T8.435 tractor is not the heaviest or the tallest in the world but its £3,000 tyres and tank-style tracks stand two metres high, it bristles with antenna and at, about £250,000, it must be one of the most expensive. For that, the farmer gets a monster […]