Most produce farmers I know create huge multi-booked spreadsheets but there are some fantastic web applications like Tend.ag that have excellent user interfaces for both computer and smart phones. Creating a crop plan that accounts for plant family rotations and successions planned through time and space takes a lot of knowledge and effort. While I spend a lot of time working with and for row-crop farmers, my own farm focuses on specialty produce. Don’t underestimate farmers’ ability to adapt to new technology.įarm Tech is already much more advanced than most people realize. A farmer firend of mine’s home-schooled son, who signed up for an advanced caluculus class freshman year at University, was warned by the professor that his education was “insufficient for this level class.” What the professor did not know is that the father and son routinely interrupted dinner (the dining room doubled as classroom) to jump up to the chalkboard and debate differential equations. Farmer’s know and use geometry and algebra daily and usually in their heads to calculate everything from greenhouse layouts to liquid fertilizer and pesticide solutions and other inputs. You routinely handle myriad pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals, fuels, solvents, and sometimes literal shit in their most concentrated forms. You have to be at least passably skilled as a mechanic, welder, truck driver, equipment operator, meteorolgist, botonist, agronomist, accountant, chemist, surveyor, builder, carpenter and commodity trader.
#Fs19 welker farms professional#
To be a farmer is to be a Renaissance man/woman by necessity.Īs someone who toggles back and forth between the blue collar, hands-in-the-dirt world and the professional class office world, sometimes several times a day, I can tell you that most non-farmers have inumerable misapprehensions about farmers and farming. Let me explain, but first a little primer. So, to answer Balaji’s question, yes, it can be done, but there will be a steep learning curve as the myriad environmental variables are solved-for in the programming. Keyboard commanding equipment resources, especially ones that can operate semi-autonomously once engaged, would be a dream come true. It’s fascinating, complex, and realistic even down to market considerations and profitability.Īs I watched the game, I found myself wishing I could operate my own farm similarly, i.e.
#Fs19 welker farms simulator#
If you go to the “live” tab of the Farming Simulator Youtube page here, you can watch people from all over the world playing in real time. The “mods” page is a collection of tractors, loaders, trailers, tools, implements, fertilizer and pesticide inputs, and even buildings created by a dedicated community of coders. The website’s tutorials look like a proper Ag academic curriculum.
Not only are the graphics and user interface beautiful and life-like, but the tasks and workflow are far more real-world than I expected. Part 1: Real-World Farming A Quick IntroductionĪfter a brief Twitter message exchange with one of my all-time intellectual heroes, Balaji Srivinasan, he being a polymathic entrepreneur and previously a Stanford lecturer, and I being someone just (barely) smart enough to be enthralled by his projects and teachings, I have endeavored to put down here a response to his question to me “how close is Farming Simulator to your actual job?” And by inference, can farming operations be controlled virtually using this type of technology?įor those like me who weren’t familiar with the video game, Farming Simulator, it is shockingly realistic.
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