Farmers with Smart Technologies

Do you still believe farmers’ life is based on weather? In recent years, young farmers in Taiwan between the ages of 30 and 50 rely more on data than on "feelings". How is this done? They are the new generation of Smart Tech Farmers. Did you know that the curriculum of schools of agriculture includes not only seedling techniques and variety improvement but also big data courses on field database management and programming language? Huu-Sheng Lur, Dean of NTU College of Agriculture, said smart agriculture, also known as Agriculture 4.0 makes predictable agricultural production and marketing by cross-domain technology integration
to achieve increased cost-effectiveness. The advancement of technology means the changing of the traditional primary industries Instead of hoes, young farmers now work in the field with smartphones and tablets. It is in fact more complicated than that. We introduce two cases of smart agriculture operation as mentioned in Business Week to see how they proceed with smart farming. This is Hemei, Changhua, location of Jiasheng Farm, the largest mushroom supplier in Taiwan. The automated liquid spawn system is introduced by General Manager Huang Sheng-Yi. The 20-day growth of king oyster mushroom is in five stages natural environment is simulated for various stages. The temperature, humidity, lighting, and carbon dioxide concentration are all under control. The digitized mushroom farming at Jiasheng Farm
shortens the cultivation time of spawn and increases the production by 30%. The second case is in Liuying, Tainan K. K. Orchard, the largest sweet potato contract farm in Taiwan with a total planted area of 1,000 hectares uses unmanned aerial vehicle and GPS positioning to patrol on the field on preset routes to replace laborious human patrol. The images collected is sent back to the "real-time field management" cloud system. Color differences of the images are analyzed and potential shortage of water or insect infestation is reported for human operation. The use of drone camera by K. K. Orchard for field patrol has integrated 1000 hectares of sweet potato farms
and has saved a lot of labor of 600 farmers. When technologies meets the tradition, harvest is done with technologies the new generation of farmers on the fields
bring with them creativity in smart agriculture. The competition is no longer on the size of the planting area but the capability of integration to maximize the limited resources. On the land of Taiwan, when agriculture meets new technologies "precision agriculture" is the pivot of new agriculture.