Smart Farming Week: March 10 - 16, 2025
Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter.
From variable-rate and selective spraying to AI-enable prescriptions, Smart Farming is a strategy and mindset to optimize every acre. This focus simultaneously drives an understanding of return on investment and deepens the customer’s trust to produce more bushels more efficiently every crop year.
“We are using cutting-edge technology in farm accounting, and it also makes our partners easier to do business with,” says Brian Stark, co-founder of Traction Ag. “Farmers can avoid the paperwork nightmare and focus on farming—the time savings is super important.”
Getting more done quicker, more thoroughly and more accurately seems like quite a feat, but many industry pros give real-world examples of how artificial intelligence (AI) is helping ag retailers do just that every day.
Now with more than two full years of experience in the field, Jeff Crissinger and the team at Nu-Way K&H Cooperative are ready to share their takeaways and insights on how selective spraying is changing custom application.
Robust machine connectivity is critical for today’s technology to deliver the benefits and ROI farmers require for adoption on the farm.
Read up on some of the latest management tips to make sure you’re getting the best performance and efficacy from your spray drone program this growing season.
Like a sharp card player trying to gain an edge against the house, you always have to know your numbers in today’s competitive farm landscape. Here’s how one mega operation does it.
Steady investment in ‘green’ biofuels has promised new market demand for farmers and ethanol producers, but will that continue in 2025?
With the goal to provide an all-in-one platform to manage farm operations and finance, Bushel Farm will include a digital wallet with the ability to enable an interest bearing account.
Erich Eller and the Forefront Ag team work with growers to conquer legacy using technology, agronomic advising, and an openness to try new things.
His senior year of high school, Dalton Dilldine’s dad unexpectedly passed away, leaving a limited succession plan and a teenager with a big decision: take over the operation, start his own farm or go to college. He chose all three.
“When applied with synthetic nitrogen, it is optimized by 50%, so in other words rates can be reduced–dramatically,” Darin Moon says. “It’s a monstrous claim. We aren’t throwing that number out lightly.”
Heritable Ag aims to make food crops and tree crops up to 30% more productive.
AgVend continues to add to how its Nexus partner network adds to its portal features and functionality.
Using AI technology Axiom, the Growers Loyalty Program can now analyze customer behaviors and product performance data. Additional headlines include a new starter from Kugler and a Nufarm herbicide that has received registration in Colorado.
The Conservation Connector directory allows users to search programs by crop, conservation practice, and geography to help producers and their advisers find relevant local programs.
MIT scientists have developed robotic insects that could aid farming through artificial pollination.
The introduction of N-Finity is an extension of Nutrien’s “purpose-built approach” to biologicals, and it brings three ways to improve nitrogen management in a single product and application.
According to the new interim rule, farmers can choose one or more of the CSA actions — no-till or reduced-till, cover crops, and nutrient management. Unlike prior rules, farmers no longer have to use all three on the same field at the same time.
A quick rundown of some recent notable smart farming products and companies innovating electrified and autonomous solutions.
“This year’s cohort represents the best in labor-saving robots, rapid diagnostics, new traits and sustainable biologics selected to help farmers now and build a bridge to a more resilient farming system,” said Pete Nelson, President of AgLaunch.
Re-engineered cameras and rugged GPUs make up the latest leap forward as John Deere forges ahead to a fully autonomous production system by 2030.
Biowish Technologies will be applying a further focus on its agricultural business after selling its environmental management business at the end of 2024.
Farmers are embracing mixed fleets, retrofit options, spray drones and automation as they stare down another tough year.
We wanted to have a little ag-related fun with Teslas’ recent Optimus robot reveal, and you guys delivered the goods.
Five years after their introduction, carbon offset markets have evolved, and some have disappeared.
One team shares how efficacy in biological production has leveled up behind the scenes.
Instead of looking at the technology to cut costs, southwest Kansas farmer Luke Jaeger sees it as a way to do a more effective job at battling intensifying weed pressure.
Several U.S. agriculture drone service companies could soon have their wings clipped if a ban on technology from Chinese drone maker DJI becomes reality.
For agribusiness accounts, this new feature gives an efficient way to bring an entire customer base into digital payments.
Netafim, an international pioneer for subsurface irrigation, has a new offering in its GrowSphere operating system.