In today’s roundup, get caught up on the latest ag technology developments and land use news.
Land use
In a letter to grain merchandisers, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack closed the door to suggestions for the emergency planting of crops on land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve, saying it would be impractical.
“While it is clear there are no significant short-term gains to be realized from opening the program to crop production, I want to emphasize that USDA will continue to monitor the crisis in Ukraine and its global reverberations,” wrote Vilsack, mentioning two USDA food donation programs. “We are providing data and agricultural expertise and stand ready to take action to mitigate these challenges.”
South Dakota’s drought is bad and getting worse. Meanwhile, a new, long-range forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offers little hope for green pastures ahead.
“Good range management is the basis of every drought plan,” says South Dakota rancher Dan Rasmussen. “Nature wants you to protect the land by using good grazing practices. So, we’ve been doing that and seeing benefits in dry years. That’s the first part of our drought plan.”
A major UN climate report released on Monday lays out a broad array of strategies for limiting emissions and mitigating climate change.
Land-based mitigation measures are “some of the most important options currently available,” the authors wrote, since land can both sequester carbon in plants and soil and produce substitutes for fossil fuels. The agriculture, forestry, and land-use sectors alone could provide 20% to 30% of the mitigation needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. to 2°C., according to the report.
Agriculture Technology
Editor Alex Gray covers an announcement from Samsara Inc. that details a a new integration with John Deere to expand on its existing JDLink integration. The new integration plans to add features providing greater visibility into support vehicles on farming operations.
“Bringing our customers the highest quality products and services is always top of mind at John Deere,” says Matt Daniels, product marketing manager at John Deere. “Now, with the power of Samsara devices on farm support vehicles, customers have a way to stay on top of where everyone is to improve farm logistics.”
Editor Madelyn Ostendorf reports on a new platform from Intelinair.
Intelinair, an automated crop intelligence company, is launching a new platform so ag retailers have a better understanding of what is happening in fields. The platform, AGMRI Enterprise, will aggregate a view of customers’ fields with regularly scheduled flights, gathering details on fields and surrounding geographical areas.
Editor Laurie Bedord covers the collaboration between Topcon Agriculture and MyAgData.
The two companies will improve access and data sharing of electronic grain cart load data. The combined effort will create a more streamlined workflow for farmers and a more efficient remittance process for crop insurance adjusters.
FarmlandFinder, the first online sale-leaseback platform for farm ground, has been relaunched by EasyKnock with a focus on helping farmers achieve their goals, writes Editor Madelyn Ostendorf.
The new edition of FarmlandFinder exclusively offers sale-leasebacks to farmers and can help achieve goals such as strengthening balance sheets, funding operations, eliminating debt, and buying more land.
