Combine it with compostable plastics and organic circuits though and you might be able to build a low power sensor that biodegrades in a dozen years or so.

And largely these sensors are unnecessary. Such "precision agriculture" efforts are just doubling down on a broken agricultural paradigm.

Farmers might be interested in reclaiming the data for themselves, though. Right now, they're in a situation where John Deere uses sensors in the tires of the tractors the farmers license (they can't buy them) to get soil density and similar data as the farmers use them... then they sell that data to Monsanto and other seed companies. The farmers are completely cut out of it and can not benefit from the data. In fact, it would be against the law for them to try to intercept or peek at the data themselves.

What does that even mean? Plant seeds, water, temperature is just how nature works. What other "paradigm" of agriculture is there?

Maybe you mean everyone growing their own food? That's not sustainable.

Two things:

* Sure, seeds germinate with water and warmth. But that's true today. In the words of an Australian farmer quoted in a research paper a few years ago: "Mate, we don't need a chip to tell us the soil's dry."

* There are other paradigms of agriculture that are actually sustainable. Agroecology is a good example of an alternative scientific paradigm for agriculture, one that thinks of agriculture in ecological terms.

Not all things are farmed like you seem to think. I own a commercial wild blueberry operation. Knowing this information, with less effort and cost, can improve harvesting methods and may do things like reduce the reliance on chemical weed mitigation strategies.

I'm not convinced by the Australian farmer.

Microclimates are a thing. Water is not evenly distributed across any sizable plot of land. Being able to tell where the water is (or more importantly isn't) can surely help deploy resources more efficiently.

But, I'm a desk jockey, and hope to never, ever be a farmer.

You are right. I've been working a bit with the software for water management (although related to measurements of humidity over the day). Local management of resources does increase yields and sometimes just saves the crop.

The Australian farmer might not, but the machine that replaces him will.

Only if the same machine has to run on every farm in the world, without the option of learning what local conditions are or having them configured.

Machines operating farms in Australia can easily just assume the soil is dry, like the farmers do, as long as they don't also have to operate farms in Louisiana.

Applied ecology (Permaculture).

Traditional agriculture is about the least productive way to interact with Nature.

As demonstrated by the modest results (population growth from a few hundred thousands to 7.5 billion). /s

That's actually the conversion of oil into biomass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fertilizer

Details and other topical information can be had here:

"Toby Hemenway - How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nLKHYHmPbo

Long story short: even a grossly inefficient process can produce massive growth if you have a torrent of free energy.

That's at least partially true. World population in 1850 (before the use of modern fertilizers) was about 1.6 billion. Then you have to take in account mechanization of agriculture and genetic selection of varieties, which also probably multiplied the yields several times.

But I would argue that all these practices are part of the aforementioned "traditional agriculture".

Well, mechanization is powered by oil, yes? And genetic engineering could be applied in any case.

In any event, you haven't made an argument that "traditional agriculture" is more efficient than applied ecology (Permaculture is an (the?) exemplar.)

Yield per acre is greater in a Permaculture farm than in a traditional farm, often by as much as an order of magnitude or more. Inputs are fewer too.

More importantly, under Permaculture the soil improves over time, while in traditional agriculture it is degraded and eventually becomes desert or wasteland.

A well-designed permaculture system should exceed industrial farming if you are talking about productivity per square meter. The problem is that the amount of labor required is totally unsustainable to feed billions of people.

That's where I see smart technology playing a role. Industrial agriculture involved building farming techniques around the machinery we have available. We "just" need to invert that approach and build smart machinery that enables us to glean food from highly-productive ecosystems.

> the amount of labor required is totally unsustainable to feed billions of people.

I disagree: in a well-designed system there may be a lot of labor in the beginning, but it should fall off within a year or two to a very low level, much lower than conventional farming.

(I admit a lot of "Permies" don't seem to set it up this way.)

They're unnecessary, but mainly because tractors have equipment that do this anyway. So unless it's needed more frequently than when the tractor's driving around, it's probably not worth the extra cost.

I've seen a drone scanning over a large corn field, dropping sensors seems silly when you can outfit infrared tempature sensors/humidity sensors/etc on a drone.

I thought it was till, plant, harvest, and in between you just wait for nature to take its course. Do they have occasion to patrol a field with tractors more often than that?

On some crops yes, you spray all kinds of things after plating. On other crops you don't dare passing a tractor around them, else they would be ruined.

I'm sad to see eutropia's comment downvoted - it's a valid point that needs consideration. We only get one earth.

I didn't downvote him/her, but speaking from a general perspective as a longtime HN reader, this site seems to be intended to appeal to people interested in new technologies and interesting applications. It's just not a good home for knee-jerk naysaying and virtue signalling.

Those kinds of posts -- while sometimes relevant and valuable when they have actual numbers behind them -- should be held to a more critical standard on HN than they often are, IMO.

Why are you throwing "knee-jerk naysaying" and having a conscience and an awareness of the recklessness and greed of some, and of the lack of spine of others in one bucket?

What about the knee-jerk cheerleading? How does that express more and deeper interest than discussing potential pitfalls? I don't know about anyone else, but when I code I spend more time thinking about what could go wrong and how to address that, than admiring the parts that work perfectly.

When someone gushes at the mouth about how "awesome" it is that it took many very talented people a lot of time to make a toaster play music, the heretics are quiet already. What more do you want?

There seems to be a trade-off of chilling effects here, on the one hand, nobody would show off things they made to a community that just bashes it, on the other hand, nobody would show off their serious thoughts to a community that just wants fluff.

> sometimes relevant and valuable when they have actual numbers behind them

Oh, "actual numbers". Do you have any actual numbers proving they aren't held to the standard they should be held to? If you do, I changed my mind, I now want actual Egyptian hieroglyphs of a seer announcing you making that claim; I can make up arbitrary, oddly convenient demands too.

I think its a valid point, but perhaps throwing these things into a crop was just "an example" illustrating how inexpensive these things are? The researchers aren't necessarily interested strictly in agricultural applications.

Researchers at my alma mater created paper transistors, maybe they could be biodegradable after EOL?