A traditional diesel-powered tractor will produce approximately 14-times more emissions than an ordinary car. This fact alone makes it clear that the farming industry needs a clean alternative to the conventional tractors of today.
Enter Monarch Tractor, a California-based firm that has created an all-electric tractor that has no tailpipe emissions. Not only that, but the tractor is also able to operate with or without a driver, using 360-degree cameras and other autonomous technologies to drive itself. In essence, a farmer could program the tractor to follow a pre-made route, or it can be enabled to follow a worker on the job.
The Monarch tractor is designed to maximize labor productivity and yield thanks to machine-learning capabilities that allow it to collect and analyze over 240 gigabytes of “crop data” taken from the field it operates, with the data being stored in a cloud-based program from Monarch. This information can then be used to implement real-time adjustments or to provide long-term analysis of field and crop health. To keep track of all this information, all a farmer would need to do is connect the tractor to their smartphone.
Farming has long been seen as a traditional activity, but more and more, we’re seeing digitalization take place in the farming industry. Just last week, we wrote about a new portable sensor that monitors plant health in real-time. And in October, we published a story about a futuristic plant-inspecting buggy that allows farmers to grow more resilient crops with less reliance on fertilizers and pesticides.
