This Year’s Consumer Electronics Show Proves That Even Farming Can Give Us High Tech Profits
Last month’s virtual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) featured all sorts of cutting-edge gadgets, but this year’s award for consumer high-tech innovation ended up going to a company that makes tractors.
It’s no joke. Looking at what they’ve brought to the table, it couldn’t be clearer that they deserve it. What they’ve created perfectly symbolizes the marriage of hardware, robotics, and software in the digital age.
More than that, it’s proof that the modern high-tech sector can transform and revolutionize any aspect of today’s economy, even something like agriculture, that’s almost literally “as old as dirt.”
After all, a field known as “precision agriculture” is making modern farming a very sophisticated and tech-driven enterprise.
This is a company pushing the boundaries of a sector worth $6 billion and growing at 15% a year.
Even better, it’s beating the broad market by more than 140%.
Image Source: Unsplash
Today, I’m going to show you why our ag-tech leader will continue to rack up big gains…
Smart Farming
Now then, the first use of the term precision agriculture occurred at the University of Minnesota back in 1985 in regard to using technology to vary input in crop fields.
But by today’s standards, it could charitably be described as “rudimentary.”
Today, the field includes using satellites to track and guide the tilling, fertilizing, and harvesting tractors, as just one example.
This lets farmers optimize the path of their tractors, saving time and fuel. It also allows the machines to adapt to changing topsoil depth and pressure, cutting down a process from 20 minutes to just six seconds.
Afterwards, when it’s time to plant seeds, precision ag allows farmers to run their machines at speeds up to 10 mph.
That’s much faster than manual, uncoordinated planting. It also means more seeds get planted in that perfect window that will massively improve yield.
Disclosure: None.
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