Precision agriculture traces cotton to the t-shirt – 01/30/2024 – Tech

“Even from more than 2,000 km away, we can control the machines on our farm. We can compare their performance, see how long it takes to do a certain activity, measure everything”, says producer Andrew Miller, owner of a property in Odem , in Texas.

He tells how the routine in his cotton field has changed since, using data maps, he began to adjust the operation of the machines via software.

“Technology has helped to increase the efficiency of the property and avoid losses. We still need to have an employee on each tractor, but in the future we will have autonomous machines.”

In addition to controlling the performance of tractors and other equipment through smartphones, precision agriculture already allows producers, like Miller, to track cotton from the field to the t-shirt.

At its stand at this year’s CES (consumer technology mega event that took place at the beginning of January in Las Vegas), John Deere presented its harvester system that performs this tracking using computers and satellite images.

The system uses RFID (radio frequency identification tags) integrated into the canvas of the cylindrical cotton bale. Through it, the equipment reads the bale’s serial number and compiles it into a file.

Then, the serial number is sent to a controller and combined with the producer, farm and field identification codes. It also records harvest time and date data. This way, it is possible to trace the origin of the cotton, from the field to the final product.

According to executives Jahmy Hindman, director of Technology, and Aaron Wetzel, vice president of Production Systems and Precision Agriculture, the system provides greater security for the producer, who has more control over his property, and also for clothing manufacturers, who can make sure that their product is made with certified raw materials.

“Consumers are increasingly concerned about issues other than price, they want to be sure they are consuming something that was produced responsibly,” says Hindman.

At the event, the brand also showed in more detail its autonomous tractor with technology consisting of six cameras that provide 360° visibility around the equipment. The vehicle operates without an operator in the cabin and stops operating if it notices an unknown object on the programmed route.

Autonomous driving allows the farmer to plan the path the tractor will take in the field. To train the equipment, the company collected more than 200 million images that are stored in the cloud. The tractor can operate throughout the day, including at night.

The brand also presented a model of herbicide sprayer to eliminate weeds before planting and during the plant’s growth period.

The equipment, called See & Spray, uses machine vision to detect weeds through a recognition database that is updated frequently and activates nozzles to spray only the places where they are identified.

With technology, manufacturers promise to reduce the use of aggressive products and reduce their negative impact on the environment. The new versions of the equipment work with a set of 36 cameras. When the system detects the weed, it issues a command to the nozzle to spray it.

“Technology is such an important part of a producer’s daily life, that today we see ourselves equally as a technology and agricultural equipment company. In the future, this will be increasingly mixed”, says Hindman.

The company’s goal is to connect 1.5 million machines by 2026, ranging from its own brand tractors to agricultural support vehicles and trucks from other manufacturers. Currently, there are around 500,000 connected devices, mainly in the United States.

In Brazil, there is already equipment like this in operation, such as the S700 series harvester. It has two intelligent cameras that take images every two seconds to read the grain passage with automatic adjustments to the machine every three minutes.

According to the company’s Innovation Director for Latin America, Heather Van Nest, Brazil is one of the main markets for the brand, which is a leader in cotton cultivation in the United States.

“One of the biggest challenges for us is to improve connectivity in the Brazilian countryside. Without this, the producer will not be able to count on the advances available or those that will arrive.”

To try to get around this, the company and Starlink, Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite internet service, announced an agreement to equip tractors and other agricultural machinery with high-speed internet in Brazil and the United States. The partnership should be implemented throughout 2024.

“Starlink is ideal for rural locations. Later this year, JohnDeere will begin equipping new and existing machines in the United States and Brazil with Starlink to help connect farmers with high-speed internet so they can fully take advantage of the technologies of precision agriculture”, said the technology company, through its account on X (formerly Twitter).

According to the agro company, this will enable the use of technologies, such as autonomy, real-time data sharing and remote diagnostics.

The reporter traveled at the invitation of John Deere