Special Report

Hands-free wireless at work on the farm

It seems like with every new year, new technologies are being introduced for agriculture. Craig Ganssle, Adam Van Heusen and Deb Colitas of Farmhouse Networks are exploring what Google Glass can do on the dairy farm.  They are demonstrating the technology at the PDPW business conference this week and asking farmers what they would like to see it do.

Ganssle was asked by Google two years ago to take part in the development of Google Glass. He says while the consumer headlines have been critical of the technology they immediately saw how a wearable device would be valuable in industry and agriculture where hands-free capability is beneficial.

They are just scratching the surface in agriculture but for starters, one can look at an ear of corn through Google Glass and count the kernels “in about two seconds”. That information could then be quickly transferred to an agronomist or other uses.  Eventually the information could be combined with data from other sources such as GPS to better manage a crop.

The possibilities with livestock are immeasurable; a dairy producer could look at a cow in the herd and immediately Google Glass would identify the cow and provide any information the farmer would like to know about that cow. Colitas says another use would be if an animal is sick, video, pictures and vital information about the animal could be quickly sent to a veterinarian for assessment.

Connectivity is a big challenge in a farm setting, Van Heusen says the systems use “enterprise-rated equipment”, it is more expensive but it will work in the moisture, dirt and elements on a dairy farm.

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