Pest control: Wicked weeds may be agricultural angels.

Farmers looking to reduce reliance on pesticides, herbicides and other pest management tools may want to heed the advice of Cornell agricultural scientists: Let nature be nature – to a degree. “Managing crop pests without fully understanding the impacts of tactics – related to resistance and nontarget plants or insects – costs producers money,” said Antonio DiTommaso, professor of soil and crop continue

Top 10 technologies in precision agriculture.

1. GPS/GNSS It’s hard to tell exactly where the state of precision agriculture today would be without GPS — literally. From virtually the moment agriculture gained access to position locating satellites in the 1990s, operators and manufacturers have found various ways to tie into these tools to make managing field work much easier and accurate. “In North America and Europe, growers can turn on the tractor and get to work almost immediately,” says T.J. Schulte, Marketing Manager for Trimble Agriculture Division. Looking beyond these capabilities, experts say that satellite technology is truly deserving of its “global” moniker. “No longer can we refer to all these systems as GPS — that’s not an accurate description when referring to new Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receiver technology today,” says Greg Guyette, President of Insero. Instead, he adds, GNSS covers all countries’ satellite constellations including GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. 2. Mobile Devices After figuring out where precision agriculture stands on the planet, the next most important innovation these past 20 years would have to be the development of mobile devices. The world today would be an entirely different place without them, according to Illinois Grower John Reifsteck. “Without the cell phone, we probably would still be sitting in the barn a lot, waiting for someone to come to the barn and make things work,” says Reifsteck. Today, cell phones have morphed into a whole host of useful mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. So ingrained has this technology become that experts estimate that there are more mobile devices on today — 7.25 billion — than people (around 7.2 billion). As of 2016, most precision agriculture manufacturers that dabble in the mobile devices market have spent most of their time trying to expand the capabilities these products can offer to users. “We run our business on the 20-minute rule when it comes to getting information to the user,” says Dr. Marina Barnes, Vice President of Marketing for FarmersEdge. “If you can’t get your technical data to work for the farmer within the first 20 minutes after he receives it, he’s probably never going to use it.” continue

Digital farms : the future of Agriculture.

 

 Farmers, ranchers and growers the world over are transitioning to precision agricultural methods, i.e., subdividing their acreage into many unique sub-plots -- in some cases right down to the individual plant, tree, or animal -- thereby enabling increased productivity, trace-ability and lower overall costs.

 Low-cost aerial vehicles, sensors and cameras are integral to the process and are being used to map, observe, sense and spray. 

 Robotic automation is already widely practiced and can be seen today in milking systems and increasingly in precision techniques that use sensors and drone-mounted cameras to steer tractors and to monitor soil for temperature, moisture, disease, varmints, crop quantity, weather damage, and nutrient content. 

 This data is then analyzed in order to improve decision-making on planting, weeding, pruning and chemical application. 

Digitally-controlled farm implements are already in use in developed countries and most Western farmers and ranchers are high-tech to some extent and more variable-rate dispensing devices are on the horizon. 

How technology in agriculture can reduce extreme poverty.

Self-steering kits can be found in most new tractors and follow RTK/GPS and digital guidance with levels of accuracy down to the centimeter level. 

 There are partially and fully automatic and robotic devices for most aspects of agricultural functions from grafting to planting, from harvesting to sorting, from packaging to boxing, but because the metrics of their implementation have thus far been too costly, and the safety and liability aspects difficult, so they are not widely deployed. 

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 These challenges are being met with a new group of vendors, lower costs, and new robotic products, often marketed in the form of Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS). Adding to these challenges are ever-increasing costs and lack of available water, labor and tillable land. continue

Lagos food security summit and exhibition..

Agricultural value chains that you can invest in and make returns,come explore opportunities ,listen to experts ,visit various stands and benefit from these opportunities. The agricultural value chains you can invest in are 1) poultry 2) red meat/abattoir. 3) piggery 4) vegetables 5)coconut 6)aquaculture and ...find out more @ the summit holding @ Lagos Airport Hotel Ikeja on the 10 and 11 of Nov 2016. Come,connect,invest and profit.See this

Agricultural innovations.

Agriculture is the new economy ,join in

Hospice & Palliative Care in veterinary medicine.

Hospice and palliative care are growing areas of veterinary medicine as well. Hospice and palliative care generally refers to care provided to patients after a diagnosis of a terminal or incurable illness. The goal of hospice and palliative care is to provide your pet with a good quality of life free of pain and suffering during their final days to months. This care is focused on providing comfort, management of pain, and relief of anxiety. It is not focused on providing a cure. This type of care focuses on the partnership between the pet, the family members, and the veterinary team. Veterinary hospice care includes, but is not limited to: 1)Education: First and foremost, we want to provide you with the education and resources necessary to understand your pet’s condition. We will provide you with written instructions tailored to your individual pet’s care. 2)Pain management: We focus on providing a multi-modal pain management program for your pet. 3)Nutritional and fluid support: The best method of nutritional and fluid support for your pet will be highlighted. This may involve subcutaneous fluid therapy as well as assisted feeding via nasogastric tube or syringe feeding. 4) Wound care and bandaging: Some patients may require regular wound care or bandaging. The veterinary team will provide you with the instructional training to provide this care at home. 5)Anti-anxiety and behavioral modification medication: Many senior patients develop anxiety or other behavioral changes. We will discuss these changes with you and explore

Young female birds must seek older mates to adapt better to varying environmental conditions.

New research from the University of Guelph which appears in this month’s issue of Animal Behaviour ,shows young female birds with older mates are more likely to nest during optimal times and adapt better to varying environmental conditions than those paired with younger males. “It’s the first study to show males have a big influence – in birds – on female nesting decisions,” said Ryan Norris, a professor in U of G’s Department of Integrative Biology. He worked on the study with researchers Shannon Whelan and Julie Morand-Ferron of the University of Ottawa, and Dan Stickland. It’s also a critical finding for understanding impacts of climate change, Whelan added.“How females can adjust to changing conditions over their lifetime is important for predicting future effects of climate change. Can they just keep adjusting, or is there a limit?” continue