The USDA’s Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program represents an investment of over $3.1 billion into US agriculture.  The statistics for the program huge:  USDA selected 141 proposals from corporations, non-profits, and universities were selected to study ways to increase climate-smart production practices for US farmers and livestock producers. USDA estimates that over the next 5 years more than 60 million tons of carbon dioxide will be sequestered as a result of the program. You can learn more about specific programs on the USDA’s dashboard for Climate-Smart Commodities ..read more

FBN recently unveiled “Norm,” an artificial intelligence (AI) advisor for FBN members. Norm may be the first dedicated artificial intelligence platform for farmers, but it will not be the last. AI is definitely on the rise in agriculture and elsewhere. This post explores questions about AI’s use in general and for agriculture. What is AI technology?  First, some basics. AI stands for “artificial intelligence.”  According to Dr. Anastasia Lauterbach, contributor to The Law of Artificial Intelligence and Smart Machines, AI should be thought of as “narrow” AI or “general” AI. Narro ..read more

Autonomous farming machines are coming. John Deere now sells an autonomous 8R tractor. Various companies offer large, commercial sized unmanned Ariel vehicles (UAVs) that can autonomously apply pesticides. Lely sells robotic milking machines. Some farmers may lament the loss of a person controlling these tasks, but the trend for more automation in farming is clear. Still, there are existing laws that will need to be updated to foster widespread adoption of these new technologies. Here are just a few. OSHA. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) establishes worker safety stan ..read more

ChatGPT is all over the news lately. If you missed it, ChatGPT is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) operated by OpenAI. ChatGPT is trained on data from various sources, including books, articles, websites, and other publicly available text type data. Users can ask ChatGTP questions in a search bar about nearly anything and ChatGPT responds based upon its training data. As ChatGPT is fed more training data, it gets smarter about how its answers questions. ChatGPT promises to replace a lot of human tasks that involve creation of text, such as writing articles about specific subject matters ..read more

Most agricultural landowners are familiar with the concept of “mineral rights.”  Real property law has long recognized the right of a landowner to sever the surface rights with the subsurface right to extract minerals from the land.  In legalese, these two property interests are referred to as the “surface estate” and the “mineral estate.”  This is all well settled in the law, as mineral rights have been recognized as long as we have been extracting oil, gas and other minerals from the land.  But how are property rights to underground caverns apportioned? One response to cl ..read more

Grower acceptance of soil carbon sequestration programs seems to be lagging, based upon my unscientific observations. There are many speculations about why this is true, including the minimal payments most programs are offering in exchange for somewhat lengthy agreements growers must sign to participate. A group of companies called the Agricultural Climate Market Collaborative believes that lack of “transparency” is one of major road blocks to acceptance. To address transparency, the Collaborative developed eleven principles to guide carbon ecosystem marketers when forming these new contracts ..read more

Tesla has now sold more than 3 million cars worldwide. There is no doubt that automotive manufacturers are shifting research and development dollars towards making more electric vehicles (EVs) in order capture some of Tesla’s growing market dominance in this space. If you, like me, love cars, trucks and other motorized vehicles, it’s interesting to wonder what changes Tesla’s disruption will have on agriculture. At a recent speaking engagement to a group of foreign ag leaders, I was asked to speculate about how Tesla might impact US agriculture. Here is my list. More all-electric powertrains ..read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed a new rule meant increase the ESG information available to investors, but it is also causing some heartburn in agricultural circles due to the feared downstream effect. The SEC’s proposed corporate disclosure rule would require publicly traded corporations to report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  Much of these disclosures center around what are called “Scope 1,” “Scope 2,” and “Scope 3” emissions. If you have read these terms and wondered the Scope of emissions means, read on. Scope 1 Emissions.  The Kyoto Protocol int ..read more

Apple CarPLay in 2022 I recently replaced the CD player on my 1999 Toyota Landcruiser with a modern Apple CarPlay equipped stereo. My old SUV now displays the latest iPhone apps when I drive on the stereo’s LCD screen. CarPlay works great. If you have driven a car with Apple CarPlay, you know that it drastically simpliefies integrating your phone into your driving experience. No more searching for a way to sync your iPhone’s contacts, music, or maps with your vehicle.  Just plug in your phone (or connect wirelessly) and your phone’s apps appear on your vehicle’s infotainment screen. (Goo ..read more

I recently advised the AGree Initiative and the Data Foundation on a white paper titled: Modernizing Agricultural Data Infrastructure to Improve Economic and Ecological Outcomes. The white paper explains the current problems with the USDA’s decentralized, disorganized system for collecting ag data and concludes with four different possible solutions. As congress begins to shape the next farm bill, the time for discussing these issues is now. Though many farms are already collecting and using ag data to improve their operations, the USDA has not similarly benefited from this new technology. USD ..read more