Modern U.S. agriculture is changing as follows: precision agriculturewrites Paul Roberts, founder and editor-in-chief of securepairs.org. security ledger.
For starters, there are autonomous tractors and “smart spraying” systems that use AI-powered cameras to identify weeds. “Key components of precision agriculture include farm equipment connected to the internet and GPS, highly accurate remote sensors, ‘big data’ analytics, and cloud computing.”
However, like any technological revolution, there are both “winners” and “losers” in the emerging era of precision agriculture. Once widely adopted, precision agriculture is expected to further reduce the need for human labor to operate farms. (Self-driving devices mean we don't even need a driver anymore!) But the risks it poses go far beyond reducing the agricultural workforce. First, as the USDA points out on its website, the scale and higher capital costs of precision farming techniques tend to favor large corporate producers over small farms. Additionally, there are systemic risks to U.S. agriculture as the agricultural sector becomes increasingly connected and integrated, with a small number of large OEMs able to remotely control and manage critical equipment on millions of U.S. farms. .. (Listen to my podcast interview with hacker Sick Codes reverse engineered a John Deere display to run the Doom video game to gain insight into the company's internal cybersecurity struggles).
Finally, there is a wealth of valuable unique environmental and operational data that farmers collect, store, and utilize to get the most productivity out of their land. For centuries, such information has been stored in farmers' heads or in written or (more recently) digital records owned and controlled exclusively by farmers, and that knowledge and data are typically It has been passed down through generations of farm owners. Precision agriculture technology greatly expands the scope and granularity of that data. But doing so takes data away from farmers' control and shares it with equipment manufacturers and service providers. There is often no clear understanding from farmers themselves, and in most cases there is no financial compensation to farmers for the data itself. In fact, the federal government is so concerned about agricultural data that it included an “information collection” provision (1619) in the most recent Farm Bill.
Over time, the large-scale transfer of knowledge from individual farmers and collectives to multinational corporations has deprived farmers of one of their most important assets, their data, and has led to automated systems being managed, controlled, and accountable. You run the risk of becoming nothing more than a passive administrator of your equipment. Master of a distant enterprise.
Most importantly, Kevin Kenney (also an alternative fuel systems engineer at Grassroots Energy LLC) is a vocal advocate of the “right to repair” farm equipment. In an interview, he warned about the dangers of tying repairs to factory-installed firmware and claimed that long-standing farmers' “trade secrets” are actually being collected today. The ultimate beneficiary could be the current “cabal'' of tractor manufacturers.
“We can all agree that it's coming, but the question is, who will own these robots?”
First, you need to realize that there are laws on the books that are not enforced for one reason or another. The FTC should immediately launch an investigation into John Deere and the rest of the “Tractor Cabal” to determine the extent to which the security and privacy of farmers' farm data has been compromised. This has a direct impact on national food security. Because if thousands or tens of thousands of tractors are hacked and disabled or their data is lost, crops will be left to rot in the fields, and grocery store shelves will be bare. …Our university has also failed to recognize and warn farmers that precision agricultural equipment manufacturers are stealing data from farmers' operations in the U.S. and other countries. Ta.
Thanks to longtime Slashdot reader Chicksdaddy for sharing the article.