22 / SEEDWORLD.COM SEPTEMBER 2017 WITH THE FORECAST at your fingertips and RTK systems taking the guesswork out of straight rows, it’s hard to believe that it has only been 80 years since horses outnumbered tractors on the farm. Arguably, Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution, which laid the foundation for agriculture as we know it today, is still going strong — encompassing new and ever- evolving technologies, continuing to give birth to its own revolutions and innovations while reducing hunger in under-developed nations throughout the world. The Green Revolution began in the mid-1940s. However, the framework for the revolution was cre- ated three decades prior when German chemist Fritz Haber transformed nitrogen gas into a plant-available, digestible form: ammonia. The application of ammonia synthesis, scaled to industry by BASF’s Carl Bosch, allowed previously poor producing soils to significantly increase crop yields. The advancements made in the wheat fields of Mexico would ultimately set a new path for agriculture, and set in motion an unparalleled era of research and discovery within the industry. By the 1960s, the revolu- tion had provided the basis for the breeding of plants with greater harvest indices, increased photosynthate allocation and less sensitivity to day length. As crop yields rose, human health and nutrition improved. By the latter half of the 20th century, the global population surpassed 7 billion, more than seven times the 1.6 billion the century began with. Today, the population continues to grow; inversely, farmland acre- ages decline each year, creating an insatiable demand for agriculture to produce more while using less. The Precision Agriculture Revolution Decreased acreage combined with a higher global population, forced agriculture to advance within the parameters of precision. Today, seed placement, nutrient and crop protection application, machinery, soil and root health, and data management all continue to be the focus of this precision market. A 2016 study released by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that precision agriculture continues to be adopted rap- idly throughout the U.S. with the largest increases observed in acreages rather than individual farms; reporting that precision agriculture is used on more than 50 percent of corn and soybean acres. With the rapid adoption of precision agriculture, technology has become an integral management component in many operations. With new advance- ments continuing to materialize in this sector, it’s hard to estimate exactly where in the precision agriculture revolution we are today. Brad Lubben, a University of Nebraska Extension associate professor, estimates that we are somewhere in the middle, with data management expected to be on the next horizon within the industry. “Right now, we have the ability to produce an inordinate amount of data,” he says. “So the question becomes, ‘how do we actually manage it?’ Precision ag adoption is moving forward rapidly, but effectively uti- lizing all of the data captured just hasn’t caught up yet.” Joshua Gattis, director of application control engineering for AgJunction, a precision agriculture company, agrees. He adds that as farmers narrow their focus to decision-making based on meaningful data correlation, the next phase of precision agriculture will be to simplify acquisition and distillation of the data components which have the greatest impact and over- all return on investment. “Precision agriculture, as we know it, has become a general expectation,” he says. “As we move forward, there’s going to be a time in the near future when pre- cision [positioning] won’t be designated, but simply a default component of what a farm operation needs to get the job done.” Those in agriculture might be in the middle of the next revolution and not even know it, thanks to advancements in science, such as testing methods and DNA sequencing. LAURA HANDKE resides in Northeast Kansas with her husband and daughter and raises Red Angus and Gelbvieh cattle. She earned a bach- elor’s and master’s of agricultural science from Northwest Missouri State University and serves as a regional coordi- nator for the Missouri Farmers Care program and Ag Education on the Move. The Next Revolution