AgBlog

For my fellow agronomists and myself, not too long ago, a field visit was everything: the beginning, the middle, and the end of every recommendation delivered to the farmer. If you wanted to give any advice you hopped into the car, train or a plane arrived at the farm, looked at the crop, felt the soil, asked questions, looked at the irrigation controller outputs, took samples, and wrote recommendations.

The whole world has come together to fight the challenging threat called COVID-19; but at the same time, there is also a growing concern rippling through the world regarding the current and future availability of food. When countries sealed their borders, the transportation of goods, including food, became a tremendous challenge.

“Food Supply chain is a complex web of interactions and of actors: producers, inputs, transportation, processing plants, shipping, etc. As the virus spreads and cases mount, and block downs increase, there are seemingly countless ways the food system will be tested and strained in the coming weeks and months”

Turkey has 28 million hectares of arable land, of which only 33% has access to water for irrigation. Agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation and consumes about two thirds of available water resources. Uneven distribution of water resources, fragmented land, adverse climate conditions, sub-optimal irrigation and agricultural practices further add to the challenge. The introduction of efficient irrigation technologies for increasing agricultural productivity remains a priority for Turkey.

With inputs from Ramdas Battalwar, Business Head CI, Netafim India.

During the recent 2019 harvest, Netafim set out to investigate the use of current harvesting machinery in orchards with multiple on-ground driplines. The results are promising and indicate that machinery and driplines may be compatible after all.

EAT LOCAL, FRESH SEASONAL FOOD. Did you know that our food has many environmental impacts – from where it is grown to how far it travels before it reaches you.

Agriculture, a major contributor in today’s global economy, is responsible for approximately 998 million tonnes of agricultural waste produced in a year worldwide. This number, largely disregarded and ignored, has seen a recent shift towards sustainable development and efficient waste management as it has become a major concern for all stakeholders.

Rice is, by far, the most important food crop in the developing world, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Not fruits or vegetables, or wheat, or meat. Rice. Rich in nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, and dense in dietary fiber, rice is inexpensive to buy, easy to prepare and filling. As such, it is an important contributor to food security in some of the poorest, hungriest countries.

Somewhere in the food bowl of India, a middle-aged farmer is kick-starting his day by tilling his land. In Indonesia, a farmer and his wife are watering their rice-fields in the distant farmlands. All over the world, the farming scenes are portrayed by that common picture – small-scale farmers are the agricultural backbone of the teeming population.

The medical cannabis industry is only in its infancy stage and there are many theories and methods around on how to best cultivate it at scale. Here's how you can adopt the best practices from the agritech industry

Today, soil-based agriculture faces a lot of challenges – land and water scarcity, climate change, rising costs of agribusiness (e.g. fertilizers, fuel, pesticides), soil depletion, and degradation from over-farming. These challenges have led to the invention of soilless agriculture or hydroponics, which is a method of growing crops without the use of soil.