Farming

A new laser "scarecrow" is helping farmers to protect their sweetcorn crops from marauding birds.

​Russia's largest agricultural holding company has joined forces with AI development firm Cognitive Technologies to pilot autonomous crop management on 665,000 hectares of land. It is hoped that the technology will help reduce crop losses while also improving farming efficiency.​

​Imagine being able to harvest fresh veggies precisely when you need them without leaving the house. That's the promise of indoor gardens like the OGarden Smart and the Cell One. Now IGWorks is making a bid for your living space with a vertical hydroponics garden called the iHarvest.​

One of the most important transitions in human history was when we stopped hunting and gathering for food and settled down to become farmers. Now, to reconstruct the history of one particular archaeological site in Turkey, scientists have examined the salts left behind from human and animal pee.

​Not everyone has access to enough land for growing veggies, making indoor garden devices quite attractive prospects for those looking for year-round fresh produce. The latest is a multi-tier setup called the Cell One.​

​Living in a crowded inner city means that many residents don't have a garden of their own, so are unable to grow their own veggies. Last year's OGarden moved gardening indoors, mounting plants on a ferris-like wheel. The design has now been updated, resulting in the OGarden Smart.​

A team of scientists from Germany’s University of Tübingen has discovered a novel and unusual sugar molecule that shows great potential as a natural herbicide. It is harmless to animals and humans but can effectively disrupt the growth of various plants and microorganisms.

Classical swine fever virus (CSFV) is a highly infectious and deadly disease among pigs, with outbreaks leading to huge livestock losses. Now, researchers from Jilin University in China have genetically modified pigs to be resistant to the virus, which will also pass that down to their offspring.

A new international study into the impact of agricultural land use on climate change has found organic food production is worse for the climate than conventional farming, due to the fact that it needs greater areas of land to grow produce.

Our drones are pretty handy, but nature’s drones – bees – are far more efficient. Rather than building our own from scratch, researchers at the University of Washington have created tiny suites of sensors that bees can wear like backpacks, to help gather data from their environment.

​Australian cattle stations (aka ranches) can be huge, so checking on all the cows is a big task. With that in mind, the CSIRO national science agency has teamed up with agtech startup Ceres Tag to develop an ear tag that not only tracks the animals' whereabouts, but also detects unusual activity.

​Toxic algae blooms can be nasty, killing fish, other wildlife and sometimes even people. One of the main causes of such blooms is excessive amounts of fertilizer running off of fields and into waterways. A new type of buried sensor, however, could help address that situation.