technology plays a very important role in optimizing decisions in the field through timely, accurate, and reliable information. The agricultural activity must adapt to technological innovation to improve its processes and thus obtain higher yields.
What is agrotechnology?
Agrotechnology is the technology applied to agriculture. It provides the methods and adequate machinery to optimize production, focusing on the processes used in the sector to make the use of resources more efficient and help the farmer in his activities.
The process and development of technology in agriculture are of utmost importance since this sector is in charge of feeding the world. Food security must be provided for countries around the world, as they face high-impact problems such as climate change, water scarcity, population increase, and water impoverishment.
There are different types of technologies applied to the field in them the following stand out:
Agrochemicals: creation, development, and use of fertilizers, nutrients, pesticides, and phytosanitary procedures.
Mechanics: machinery such as seeders, furrows, sprayers, tractors, collectors, and all those that facilitate the life of the farmer.
Biological: the creation of seeds, fertilizers, nutrients, and pesticides from cellular modifications.
Computing: a tool that uses digital platforms and applications to manage and monitor cultivation processes.
Robotics: hyperspecialized machinery that relies on agricultural software to work with precision agriculture. Satellites and drones generate information (BigData) that is analyzed to carry out fertilization, harvesting, or sowing processes remotely by 'smart' robots.
Technology in precision agriculture:
Precision agriculture provides an increase and a notable improvement in crop performance, such as fertilizers and pesticides besides optimizing economic resources.
Technology has also been adapted to precision agriculture to develop more efficient, innovative, and safe agricultural processes, through the creation of productivity maps according to the agroclimatic conditions of the field.
The climatic elements such as humidity, the type of soil, and all the conditions that the geographical location entails, vary in the implementation of new technologies, as does the cultivation.
Benefits of technology in agriculture:
Today there are some beneficial technologies in precision agriculture, below we list them:
Positioning systems: they are important for agricultural traffic, since they provide information and location in real-time, allowing the creation of better routes.
Variable-rate technologies: Vital to improving the use of resources, these innovations refer to elements necessary for the field.
Remote sensors: they are responsible for capturing data on the crop, soil, humidity, rainfall, plant growth, an infestation of pests and fertilizers through wireless networks such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Recommendation systems applied to crops: these systems show yield maps and crop productivity maps based on information from past harvests, which improves crop management.
Remotely piloted aircraft: better known as drones, they offer modern and economical solutions in the field of obtaining images in areas of difficult access and monitoring the crop.
All these strategies have the main objective of optimizing resources and increasing the quality and yields of the crop.
Modern agriculture vs traditional agriculture:
Modern agriculture provides innovative and technological processes in field activities, contributing to the reduction of very important resources to increase the demand for food and fuels in the world.
Different from traditional agriculture, which is an indigenous agricultural practice and has evolved with the application of indigenous knowledge and natural resources that include the management of biodiversity.
characteristics:
A characteristic of traditional agriculture is the low technification and technological implementation in its activities. For this reason, its production usually arrives specifically for the producer's consumption, who also works with tools such as the sickle or shovel.
When carrying out an activity and using rudimentary tools, the production and performance lie mainly in the capacities and aptitudes of the farmer and his workers, so the optimization of resources is usually less.
Added to this is that the way the field is worked depends on empirical knowledge or practice.
For its part, modern agriculture is characterized by incorporating science and technology to be more efficient.
