Slashdot Mirror
GM Crop Producer Monsanto Using Data Analytics To Expand Its Footprint
Nerval's Lobster writes "Monsanto is more infamous for growing its genetically modified crops than its use of software, but a series of corporate acquisitions and a new emphasis on tech solutions has transformed it into a firm that acts more like an innovative IT vendor than an agribusiness giant. Jim McCarter (the Entrepreneur in Residence for Monsanto) recently detailed for an audience in St. Louis how the company's IT efforts are expanding. Monsanto's core projects generate huge amounts of bits, especially its genomic efforts, which are the focus of so much public attention. Other big data gobblers are the phenotypes of millions of DNA structures that describe the various biological properties of each plant, and the photographic imagery of crop fields. (All told, there are several tens of petabytes that need storage and analysis, a number that's doubling roughly every 16 months.) With all that tech muscle, the company has launched IT-based initiatives such as its FieldScripts software, which uses proprietary algorithms (fed with data from the FieldScripts Testing Network and Monsanto research) to recommend where to best plant corn hybrids. 'Just like Amazon has its recommendation engine for what book to buy, we will have our recommendations of what and how a grower should plant a particular crop,' said McCarter. 'All fields aren't uniform and shouldn't be planted uniformly either.' Despite its increasingly sophisticated use of data analytics in the name of greater crop yields, however, Monsanto faces pushback from various groups with an aversion to genetically modified food; a current ballot initiative in Washington State, for example, could result in genetically modified foods needing a label in order to go on sale here. The company has also inspired a 'March Against Monsanto,' which has been much in the news lately."
Why stick to a single crop and not rotate like days of old?
What makes you think that modern farmers don't rotate crops? I grew up on a farm. My parents and all my neighbors rotated crops regularly, and still do.
Most corn acreage isn't rotated sustainably. 30% of U.S. cropland is planted in Corn, and there are counties in the U.S. where corn has been planted on 64% of the acres for 4 or 5 out of 5 years (source = satellite data analysis by USDA). 5% to 10% is the maximum acreage in the U.S. that should be planted in corn at any one time. Corn planted year after year degrades the soil, and results in much greater use of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation water and other inputs. As corn is one of the least-efficient at utilizing fertilizer, about 2/3rds of the fertilizer runs off into waterways, creating all kinds of problems that farmers say are just not their problem.
Crop rotation systems are scalable and work well, however the U.S. subsidizes commodity corn in various ways (crop subsidies, insurance subsidies, demand mandates such as the Ethanol mandate which as 40% of our corn production going to ethanol, etc). But there are basically no subsidies for livestock, which are essential for sustainable agriculture. See the Union of Concerned Scientists recent report at http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/advance-sustainable-agriculture/healthy-farm-vision.html .
Scientists get it. Consumers get it. The only people who don't seem to get it are those who are captive to the system and benefit from the externalized costs such as pollution and the loss of topsoil...which won't effect this year's Profit and Loss statement, but will affect all our children. Buy local, support farmers who are using sustainable agriculture, support a level playing field for federal subsidies (either eliminate them or at least make them support sustainable agriculture) and call B.S. on those that say monocropping is the only way to feed the world. The only people it feeds are their short-term shareholders.