The life of a farmer is nowhere near as difficult as it was a hundred years ago, but being a farmer still involves plenty of hard work. Over time, technology has made the job of the farmer more efficient, more productive, and maybe even a little more fun.
The life-sized Tonka toys farmers have the opportunity to use make farming more exciting for the inner child, and technology makes the devices farmers get to use even more fancy.
Check out a brief look at some of the coolest high tech pieces of farm equipment no farmer should go without, and consider what could make your farming operation better.
Milking the cows
If you’re any kind of farmer, you understand the physical exertion involved in manually milking a collection of cows. It takes time and forearm strength to harvest their milk supply, and milking is a daily task.
Robotic milking stations make the job much easier. The programs connected to the milking machines give farmers the ability to monitor the output of each cow from the convenience of a handheld tablet.
Precision soil sampling
Before technology took over the industry, farmers had to sample soil for richness by hand. They would spend hours digging with a small shovel, bending and stooping to scout out the best planting locations on the land.
Technology presented farmers with the AutoProbe. The AutoProbe isn’t some alien machine for sampling human DNA, but it does pull easily behind the farmer’s favorite tractor picking up samples as the farmer moves over the land.
Farmers are able to collect dozens of soil samples in a matter of minutes, instead of taking all day to gather the information.
Nitrogen detection in crops
Crop production and management is something that happens on many farms regardless of whether they are meat or dairy farms etc. There are many different materials and enhancers on the market, you can see this site for example, however, a certain necessity is nitrogen which helps in the growth of crops. Although nitrogen is a beneficial ingredient when you’re growing crops, there is a downside to too much nitrogen. Nitrogen is typically used in fertilizers to enhance the production of a crop, but when there’s too much of it, there can be a problem.
Excess nitrogen production from crops can seep into the groundwater and be harmful to nearby marine life. Excess nitrogen can also become harmful to the crops, but GreenSeeker is a handheld device that farmers can use to keep a close eye on nitrogen production in the fields.
RFID tags on livestock
Radio frequency identification tags make a farmers job of keeping an eye on his cows a lot more manageable. RFID tags placed on the livestock’s ear let farmers know how often and how much the animals are eating.
There are also ankle tags that will monitor the walking and laying habits of the animals. With this extra information, farmers are able to better manage the health of a herd.
