fanquake

"nor do they recognise the importance of having robust netcode"

Refactoring of the core networking code has been ongoing for quite some time. See https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/projects/4.

"Can you name anybody with a good background in networking? You can't point to a list of 100 odd names and assert that certain skills must be present"

sipa? He worked as an SRE at Google before starting work on bitcoin. [1]

rustyrussell? He has done extensive work on the linux kernels networking subsystems. [2]

cdecker? He did a phd at the Distributed Computing Group in Zurich which included work on scaling bitcoin. [3]

gwillen? Also a SRE at Google before bitcoin, and worked on Dapper[1].

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/pieterwuille

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell

[3] https://disco.ethz.ch/alumni/cdecker

[4] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...

It's not observing itself, it's being observed by other autonomous vehicles.

There are sensors designed for broadacre cropping that will pick weeds out of crop.[0]

As well as sensors that will pickup weeds from dirt.[1]

This would be in the middle of those two problems. There isn't a dense crop to pick the weeds out of, but it's probably slightly too dense to just pick them up from the dirt.

[0]http://www.spaa.com.au/projects_details.php?project=16

[1]http://www.weed-it.com/

Precision agriculture is all about controlling variability. When you have a small plot of all the same soil, under the same weather conditions, your really not going to have much, if any variability, and probably won't actually need any precision agriculture. As opposed to a 400ha paddock where you can have 3 different soil types and different weather at either end of the field.

As for this technology being used on a larger scale, I'd be really interested to see the cost for a similar setup over a few thousand hectares, and what sort of efficiencies might be gained compared to our current system. However I'm not convinced it'll replace our machinery any time soon.

The other interesting use for this would be, if it gained a large enough user base, the sharing of different planting setups and rotations for nutrient replacement. i.e planting crop x and y in rotation, or interrow with crops a and b.

Local farmer groups are already a thing, where farmers get together to share research, look at properties with trials running on them etc. [1]

The question your have to answer before trying to sell any of this "info", is who, other than the farmers themselves is going to find it valuable enough to buy?

[1] http://gga.org.au/group/northern-agri-group/

What I think is going to be most interesting is companies/banks/insurances agencies being able to gleam information without going through the farmers at all. Not by subverting them and going to the machinery manufacturers, which is already happening, but just by using other sources of information, such as satellite imagery.

It's already possible to predict yield potential through biomass/NDVI monitoring via satellite, and given that imagery from a source such as LandSat is freely available, or something like Planet isn't that expensive once your a bank/insurance agency I'm certain they must already be using.

Once you can predict yields reliably via satellite, you can start to predict supply for certain types of grain in different regions, or to a lesser extent, countries as a whole. This data is useful to investment banks and insurers, as well as organisations such as CBH[1], that handle the entirety of Western Australia's grain export. They currently determine potential yield by sending out a grower survey, and asking the farmers to predict yields themselves.

I think the idea of anyone "stealing" our data is overrated. The data from our farm[2] is specific to our farm, and as long as where not farming in such a way that is detrimental to our partners (such as banks/suppliers), such that we were trying to lie about yield potential, or resource usage, I'm not sure what value could be stolen by anyone with our info. In fact we openly share all the trial work we do, so that everyone in the community can learn and benefit.

[1] https://www.cbh.com.au/ [2] https://hectare.ag/nook

Can you link to any of the work you've done, or any articles that explore similar ideas? I'm interested in reading more.

We've been using variable rate to tailor nutrient applications for a few years now[0], and have started contracting with a WeedIt to do spot spraying(major reduction in chemical application).

We've definitely discussed "reforming" some of our paddock structures to improve yield, or mitigate weed potential (sowing east-west vs north south). Although if you were going to commit to major production changes like that, you'd probably want to bundle them together. Changing sowing direction would mean restarting CTF, so you'd be best of doing another operation such as deep ripping at the same time.

We've experimented with wetting agents, as we have quite bad non-wetting soil, and the results have been quite good. It's amazing to watch the before and after[1]

Do you think we're going to need a shift in machinery before we can break out of conventional cropping patterns/methods? I'm still somewhat skeptical that a swarm farm type setup would work in our broad-acre situation, but I think a downsizing of machinery (1 * 60m bar -> 3 * 20m bar), could work if they also move to fully autonomous & electric drive. Although, automation for field operations is still quite "simple" compared to the logistics of managing seed/fert refils.

[0] A few example maps - https://hectare.ag/nooka [1] The effects being discussed here are different, but the video shows the same idea https://twitter.com/ipaddockapps/status/708066704954249216

Could you expand a bit more on what you'd like to see in a whole-systems redesign? I'm currently trying to work out what is going to be the next "evolution" in our farms operation (~10000acres in Western Australia).

In regards to your 4th point, our cropping systems in Australia are a bit different to the states. We already grow crops in a rotation, Wheat, Lupins (Nitrogen fixing) and Canola. Depending on where your farming your might also be growing cover/summer crops.

In Australia, there's a far greater yield benefit to be gained from farmers buying a deep-ripper/mulboard plough(break the hard pan and allow root growth), switching to CTF(prevent a hard pan from happening again), switch to a no/minimum till system, spreading lime(correct soil pH) and maybe spreading clay (mitigate soil erosion).

All of these practises are also "low-tech". You'd want to use VR maps to spread your lime[0], and possibly clay (although it's fair easier to pick out soil erosion by eye as opposed to varying pH), so it's probably not needed.

Once you've sorted out the fundamentals, then it makes sense to start more precision ag. There's no point trying to grow a 5t crop when your roots can't even get down to the soil moisture.

[0] Example VR lime maps, pick Lime from the available layers - https://hectare.ag/nooka

"..have to borrow before every planting" This is not limited to just small farms. In Western Australia, farm debt has been growing 8% per annum since 2000. The average farm size here is ~3500ha (8650acres).

This setup seeds at 2.5 acres a minute. In the video it's being driven by a Baldwin, but has also been run with dual JD track machines.

It uses variable rate and section control; so there shouldn't be any input wastage when the runs overlap.

It also folds up for transporting. https://twitter.com/onus_agronomy/status/732031765204766720

How big do you mean when you say 'huge fields'? Attending to single plants individually, this would be far to slow to work over a huge area.

'In contrast to modern agriculture, where things are done with huge monster tractors' - You might be interested in what http://www.bluerivert.com/ are doing. They are essentially attending to every plant individually in smaller cropping areas.

Once you actually get to a large area, I.e 1000ha fields, it doesn't make sense to attend to every plant individually throughout the season. We do however have technology to plant each seed down to mm precision, and apply nutrients based on zones created within fields.

Also, does it make sense to duplicate all the infrastructure required for one of these, over every single paddock on a farm, when we could have a single, essentially autonomous, machine crop and manage the entire area itself?