farming en When Robots Attack! <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p> <img alt="" src="" style="float:left; height:306px; width:180px" />Robots have been a part of our mythology for thousands of years, the emphasis alternating between their positive transformative power over human society and acting as agents of great destruction.&nbsp; Our image of robots has been shaped to a large extent by Hollywood and literature.&nbsp; Celluloid robots in Star Wars, 2001 Space Odyssey, Robocop, Star Trek and many of Isaac Asimov’s novels have become a part of the human story.&nbsp; Off-celluloid, robots have been helping our society in concrete ways (for example <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">police work</a> (bomb disposal), <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">infrastructure projects</a> etc.).&nbsp; However when <a href="" target="_blank">Watson won Jeopardy</a> it brought artificial intelligence and robotics a new kind of attention.&nbsp; People started to wonder if robots could replace humans.&nbsp; When we think of robots we think of <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">self driven cars</a>, <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">household robots</a> or even <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">warrior robots</a>.&nbsp; However, in our view, the influence of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more subtle and their presence more ubiquitous than one would think. One such impacted sector is the agriculture sector (in the US) which is on the cusp of a massive transformation, as it moves from mechanization to automation. When rolled out and commercialized (soon)&nbsp;this massive scale of automation will have a significant impact on US farming and on immigration for sure.&nbsp; But does this also impact the development landscape? If so how?</p> <p> Agricultural robotic systems have been implemented in fruit and vegetable harvesting, <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">greenhouses</a> and nurseries. <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harvest Automation</a>, for example, has developed the the HV-100, a 90-pound robot for commercial nurseries that can pick up and rearrange potted plants. There are quite a few silicon valley startups that are contributing to this revolution in the region known as “<a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">America’s Salad Bowl</a>”, around Salinas Valley. California, where Salinas Valley is located, produced <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">$1.6 billion dollars worth</a> of lettuce in 2010 and 70%+ of all lettuce grown in America. Lettuce Bot, a new robot developed by Stanford engineers Jorge Peraud and Lee Redden, both <a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">from</a> farming families from Peru and Nebraska, can “<em>produce more lettuce plants than doing it any other way</em>” (<a href="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Yahoo Finance</a>).&nbsp;&nbsp;Lettuce Bot’s innovation is that while attached to a tractor, it takes pictures of passing plants and compares these to a database. When the weed or a lettuce head that is too close to another one is identified, a concentrated dose of fertiliser is sprayed. A close shot of fertilizer kills the errant weed or lettuce head but actually feeds the further off crops at the same time.<br /> </div></div></div> Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:55:00 +0000 Tanya Gupta 6409 at Weekly Wire: The Global Forum <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p> <img alt="" src="" style="float:right; height:120px; width:120px" />These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.</p> <p> <strong>NPR</strong><br /><a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">In Kenya, Using Tech To Put An 'Invisible' Slum On The Map</a><br /><br /> "If you were to do a search for the Nairobi city slum of Mathare on Google Maps, you'd find little more than gray spaces between unmarked roads. Slums by nature are unplanned, primordial cities, the opposite of well-ordered city grids. Squatters rights rule, and woe to the visitor who ventures in without permission. But last year, a group of activist cartographers called the Spatial Collective started walking around Mathare typing landmarks into hand-held GPS devices." <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">READ MORE</a><br /><br /><strong>Poverty Matters Blog</strong><br /><a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Telling countries they're the worst in the world doesn't really help them</a><br />  <br /> "The west seems to be obsessed with ranking things. Whether it's Mark Owen's top 20 hits, the Forbes rich list or the 100 greatest Britons, success is apparently relative rather than absolute. But the urge to order things does not stop with pop culture and celebrities. In development, it extends to ranking countries, and not usually by their successes but by their failings. The human development index, the global peace index, the failed states index; time and again mainly northern-based organisations feel at liberty to opine about the progress of nations. The countries with the worst rankings in these indices undoubtedly have serious challenges they need to confront. The pseudo-scientific concoctions that underpin many development indices contain elements of truth, and the countries ranked as most failed have every reason to take a long hard look at themselves."  <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">READ MORE</a></p> </div></div></div> Thu, 18 Jul 2013 13:22:29 +0000 Kalliope Kokolis 6404 at The Key’s in the Keyboard: New Technologies Can Help Enhance India's Agricultural Productivity <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><P><IMG height=190 alt="" src="" width=280 align=left>Agriculture in India still remains the main source of livelihood for the majority of the rural population and more importantly the small holding farmers. With an average annual growth rate of 3.3%, the major challenges facing this sector include a shrinking land base, dwindling water resources, the adverse impact of climate change, shortage of farm labour, increasing costs and uncertainties associated with the volatility of international markets.</P> <P>A pertinent factor that continues to impinge upon these challenges is the lack of timely information about market prices, crop varieties, production techniques, seasonal risk and disease control strategies. The critical question thus is — how can we effectively apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) in agriculture to mitigate the factors that lead to the physical isolation of the rural smallholder during the ensuing 12th Five Year Plan period.</P> <P></div></div></div> Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:29:32 +0000 Abhilaksh Likhi 6292 at