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How AI and satellites are used to detect illegal manure spreading

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How AI and satellites are used to detect illegal manure spreading

After a fresh February snow, a satellite about the size of a shoebox, busy snapping photographs as it circuited the planet at 17,000 miles per hour, captured something dark in Wisconsin.

About 56 tons of livestock bedding and manure had been spread atop Mark Zinke’s frozen alfalfa field.

The image eventually appeared on the computers of Stanford University researchers, who relayed it to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Zinke, a Brownsville dairy farmer who cares for a herd of more than 1,300 cows, had forgotten about the whole thing until he later heard from the agency.

“Oh s—,” he recalled thinking at the time. “I guess we f—ed up. We gotta man up to it, right?”

Imagery collected by inexpensive satellites is ushering in an era of real-time monitoring. Some environmental advocates want the department to look down from the sky as it regulates livestock manure, a potential water contamination source.a

New England – New York Sheep Craze – 1840

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If you ever wonder why there is so many stone walls in the woods, the answer is the Merino Sheep Craze of the 1830s, when the ultra-soft, itch-free Merino wool reached a record breaking price of 57 cents/pound in 1835.
 
During the height of the Sheep Craze there was over one million sheep in Vermont, and 271,000 sheep in Rutland County alone -- and in Addison County more then 350 sheep per square mile. Forests were cleared, stones pulled out of fields and pilled up as fence rows to keep sheep in.
 

 

New England - New York Sheep Craze - 1840

Nurturing a New Era of Edible Insects | Morning Ag Clips

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Mini Livestock Farming: Nurturing a New Era of Edible Insects | Morning Ag Clips

GREENWICH, N.Y. — Insects are typically a nuisance most farmers try to eradicate from their farms, but in some areas, they are nurtured. We often do not think about farming insects, but it is a lucrative opportunity as the world continues to evolve on a more sustainable path. The new era of edible insect farming has begun opening up a world of possibilities and reshaping the way we look at today’s agriculture.

This idea of mini livestock farming, or farming microstock, is not new to the U.S. It is estimated there are somewhere between 21 to 50 insect farms currently in the U.S. It is hard to pin down just how many there are due to the high turnover of start-ups, but this is still a fairly large number especially when we compare it to other alternative livestock farming such as camel dairies that have only a handful of farms devoted strictly to them. With such a high turnover rate though, can we honestly expect the insect farming industry to take off in the U.S.?