Companies such as Case IH, one of the world's leading manufacturers of farm equipment, are keen to help the technology along to boost sales of their machinery. In conjunction with Cargill, the company is running a pilot project with half a dozen farmers in America's mid-west to quantify the benefits of precision agriculture. Mr Horan reckons that it is worth it. Consumers and processors may want to know, say, how much chemical was sprayed on a particular crop. The system enables him to tell them, plot by plot.
Precision agriculture comes in many guises.
Start-up firms in Israel and the Netherlands are trying to improve the efficiency of greenhouse agriculture by using sensors linked to computers. For example, Phytech, a small company started by Russian immigrant scientists near Tel Aviv, has developed the equivalent of a vital-signs monitor for plants. Leaves, stems and fruit are connected to devices that continuously sense things such as tissue temperature and swelling. This information is fed into automated control systems to regulate functions such as irrigation and atmospheric gas concentrations so that the crop suffers no stress. Another boost to farming may come from the Internet.