It is understandable if some view agriculture as an industry reliant mostly on sun, soil and rain — resources nature provides. Yet as the need for global food security increases and with acres of farmland disappearing, precision agriculture has become a major high-tech industry.
Agriculture is Arkansas’ single largest industry, contributing nearly $21 billion annually to the state’s economy and creating or supporting more than 235,000 jobs. Arkansas ranks first nationally for rice production, fourth for cotton and 11th in soybean production, making the state ideal for fostering the growth of precision agriculture.
What is precision agriculture? Generally, it is a term to describe farming tools based on observing, measuring and responding to within-field variability via crop management. Economically speaking, precision agriculture is an $8.5 billion industry spanning components, hardware, software and applications that has a predicted annual growth rate of 11.9 percent. As one of the nation’s primary leaders in ag production, Arkansas is uniquely positioned to leverage that growth opportunity from seed to harvest.
Because agriculture is such a driver of Arkansas’ economy, it is not surprising that the state’s major research institutions and its large agricultural, food and forestry value chain are focusing on increasingly smart and data-driven approaches to optimizing agricultural production and processing. Modern farmers and agricultural producers are adopting precision agriculture technologies and approaches on a macro level to address food security, environmental sustainability and climate resilience, food quality concerns and market competitiveness. At the same time, farmers are driven on a micro level to enhance profitability and market competitiveness and address workforce and talent shortages on their own farms.
Examples of Arkansas research supporting precision agriculture initiatives are many. At Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Argelia Lorence’s lab houses 310 different kinds of rice seeds. As a plant biochemist, she is attempting to locate genetic rice strains hearty enough to produce high yields amid rising nighttime temperatures — a result of climate change that can significantly reduce crop production.
Another example, at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, is Rebecca Lochmann’s work to protect Arkansas’ thriving aquatic industry. Her research addresses the interaction between nutrition, growth, stress resistance, immune responses and product quality for multiple fish species of commercial importance. The intersections between lab research and agriculture present an opportunity for industry to explore precision agriculture from where the field is most fertile.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that Arkansas has a large and leading base of crop, animal and timber production industries that can and should leverage precision agriculture technologies. As of March 1, several ag-biosciences companies are advancing innovations in crop sciences in Arkansas, generating new intellectual property in the form of patent awards that include at least one Arkansas inventor. The companies include Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science, Mertec and BASF Agriculture Solutions.
To learn more about the Arkansas growth opportunity, see the latest report from TEConomy Partners, Enabling an Innovation-Led Future for Arkansas: University Research Competencies Aligned with Industry Growth Opportunities, which outlines the growth opportunity in detail. The report is available free to download at aralliance.org/resources.
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