One of the first data generators to reach U.S. farms was on harvesters with yield monitors.
But advancements over the years in terms of connectivity have opened new doors for U.S. farmers.
“And all of a sudden now, you’ve got not only data coming from a yield monitor, but now we have sensors on our planters. We have sensors on our irrigation systems. We have soil moisture sensors that we installed on the field. We have soil information that we collect with machines such as electrical conductivity,” Kendall Kirk with Clemson University said.
There’s big push to make more data collection system open source, meaning information could be easily shared by everyone. Sumer Johal of the Ag Stack Foundation says there is a lot of data out there to be shared.
“Equipment data from tractors and equipment for combines and such. There’s also a lot of data besides that from different government agencies that is published. There’s a whole bunch of data being published from satellites that are public. There are weather systems from our entire country that is being published. So there’s a lot of public data that is being published, and then there’s a lot of private data that is connectable,” Johal said.
Those types of systems are often referred to as ‘plug and play’, allowing producers to easily communicate with data collection tools without having to purchase proprietary equipment.
