Big Business of Corn Mazes

Corn Mazes Business

Corn mazes have been an increasingly big business worldwide. It approximately gives supplemental income to farmers about $5,000 to $50,000 annually. It is a huge amount of money, but it also costs farmers a lot to design and build it.Nowadays corn mazes are built using GPS technology and boasting ever more complicated and unique designs to attract customers. Such attractive designs are like Scooby Doo, a battleship, Johnny Cash, and many others. On average, each corn maze can successfully attract about 4,000 to 5,000 visitors each year at $5 to $7 per person. People like to come there because of the memorable experiences that they will get. They need each other to share ideas and thoughts in ultimately finding the exit from the maze.

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Herder Bot

 

Herder Bot

 

 

Technology keeps increasing in the realm of agriculture. It is in no doubt that they will replace human labor later because of their high efficiency and effectiveness. Robotic Rover is one of the examples of agricultural robots. It is designed by Australian researchers to herd cows like a cattle dog. It uses 2D and 3D sensors as well as global positioning technology to lead cows to where they need to go. Its most appealing features is its pace. It moves at cow-speed so that the cows will not need to rush. Unfortunately, as in other agricultural robots' downside, its price is going to be roughly $1 million Australian dollars. 

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Wine Bot

 

Wine Bot

 

Agricultural robots have been very popular these days in agriculture world. People around the world are racing to invent new agricultural robots to help farmers and farm owners in promoting efficiency and boosting higher income. One of the recent agricultural robots is called Wall-Ye. This robot is invented by a French named Christophe Millot. It is essentially a self-propelled robot for pruning vines, cutting young sprouts, and also monitoring soil and vine health. It is equipped with a very tight security system, meaning that it will only operate within pre-designated vineyards and the hard drive may self-destruct in perilous situations. The downside is that the robot may cost farmers about $32,000 each.

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Agricultural Technology- Farm Defenders

 

Farm Defenders

 

     A 3D farm simulation game for the continent of Africa. The game is realistic to the agricultural conditions in Africa, like the soil type, weather, and natural challenges. It teaches its players to efficiently and effectively grow plants and become wealthy while also preventing various kinds of diseases and pests. The users of the game will also learn a variety of soils in Africa, enhance your soil productivity, grow the right crops at the right time, know various techniques to fight off pests and diseases, know when to harvest at the right time and have ideas regarding how to store and sell your crops. In addition, the game also provides its users the understanding as to how to form associations, cooperatives, and trading partners to further advance your agricultural business in your local area. Unfortunately, this simulation game is made for farming in Africa continent. Simulation program for other continents have not been made by the organization. People can send an email to the organization to create the same simulation game for their desired continents. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Agricultural Technology- Aqueduct

 

Aqueduct

 

 

     Aqueduct is an online database, created by the World Resources Institute, that lets its users to combine 12 important indicators of water risk to build global overall water risk maps. The 12 indicators are such as baseline water stress, inter-annual variability, seasonal variability, flood occurrence, drought severity, upstream storage, groundwater stress, return flow ratio, upstream protected land, media coverage, access to water, and threatened amphibians. It shows us areas that have water quality problems, gives us predictions for floods and droughts, supply-to-demand ratios, and many other details. Each location is given a certain risk score, and heat maps provided in the database points out which areas have the biggest problems. This database has been used by many companies, investors and even governments to make global policy decisions regarding water scarcity, particularly. 

 

The downside is that this database is based on the water scarcity data for the last three years, causing this database to provide results that are not fully precise or true. 

 

The advantage of this database is that it helps many people to predict and understand many areas with water scarcity and quality problems.

 

 

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Agricultural Technology- Digital Green

 

Digital Green

 

 

     Using low-cost pocket video cameras, Digital Green is a massive database full of instructional videos from across India, Ghana, and Ethiopia. It is currently working in around 1,500 villages with more than 125,000 farmers, roughly 70 percent of whom are female. It helps its users by sharing agricultural knowledge and supporting and encouraging use of new techniques. Each video is 8 to 10 minutes long, made by a farmer addressing various agricultural questions. 

 

Pros: It allows the illiterate populations, which is more than 40 percent in India, 30 percent in Ghana, and 60 percent in Ethiopia, to learn and get benefit from the videos. 

 

Cons: This is a very labor-intensive process, involving farmers from many countries. 

 

 

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Agricultural Technology- Grameen Foundation's CKW Program

 

Grameen Foundation's CKW Program

 

     Grameen Foundation team up with Palantir Technologies to revolutionize Uganda’s approach to farming. Grameen Foundation provided 28,000 geocoded soil samples from all over Uganda, and Palantir Technologies used it to create an exhaustive soil map of Uganda. The map includes pH levels on areas in the country, where to optimally plant prominent crops (maize, coffee, bananas, and soybeans), and areas which are vulnerable to maggots and other types of pests. 

 

Pros: The map is very comprehensive with regards to planting those prominent crops in Uganda. It tells its users exactly where the best to grow those crops in the country is. 

 

Cons: Unfortunately, the map has just covered those top crops. Therefore, the similar data for other crops still needs to be produced for other farmers who plant other crops. 

 

 

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Agricultural Technology- Web Soil Survey

 

Web Soil Survey (WSS)

 

 

     WSS is enormously helpful for people, especially farmers, by providing access to soil data and other related information generated by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. This great website is operated by the USDA Service (NRCS). In addition to providing soil data, it also gives users access to the largest natural resource information system in the world. One of the benefits from this powerful website is that users can utilize the soil data information to check the suitability of the soils of an area for a particular use. The soil maps and data are available online for almost 100 percent of the nation’s counties. 

 

 

Pros: Users can check if the soil of an area is suitable for a particular purpose or not. 

 

 

Cons: Because of the various and enormous data presented in the website, there is a lot of requirements for your computer to be able to open up and utilize the website. See all the requirements

 

 

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