Business
Are ‘tech dense’ farms the future of farming?
David SilverbergTechnology Reporter
Getty ImagesJake Leguee is a third-generation farmer in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Since his grandfather bought the 17,000 acres in 1956, the Leguee family has grown canola, wheat, flax and green lentils.
As a child, he watched his father and grandfather spending hours riding their tractor to sow seeds and spray crops. Sweat would coat their shirts after those long, hot days.
“It was a lot less efficient back then,” says Leguee. “Today, technology has vastly improved the job that we do.”
To keep his farm competitive, Leguee has made several innovations, particularly when it comes to crop spraying.
With software and remote cameras attached to his John Deere tractor, he can kill the weeds much more efficiently, a practice every farmer has to do before planting seeds.
“It can look down and spray a nozzle when the sensors pick a weed, while we’re going around 15 miles an hour,” Leguee says.
He adds that he saves on pesticide spray since the nozzles only turn on when weeds are detected, as opposed to the kind of blanket spraying he used to do.
The return-on-investment for adding these new layers to his farm operations are often high, Leguee adds.
“There are low-cost solutions that won’t be as expensive as new spraying tech, and they could be an app to help you better keep your records, for example,” he says.
Jake LegueeIt’s a lesson that farmers across North America are taking on board.
A 2024 McKinsey survey found that 57% of North American farmers are likely to try new yield-increasing technologies in the next two years.
Another report, from 2022, by the US Department of Agriculture said that while the number of farms in the country is shrinking, the farms that remain are becoming “tech dense”.
Norah Lake, the owner and farmer at Vermont’s Sweetland Farms, says to get a successful harvest, “there’s a lot of looking forward and then backwards and then forwards and then backwards in crop farming”.
She once used Microsoft Excel to plug in the figures for, say, their yields from a recent harvest, or a given year, and see how they compare to years prior.
“I’d want to know that if we planted 100 bed feet of broccoli, what did we actually produce?” she says.
More recently, Lake, who grows vegetables such as asparagus, tomatoes and zucchini, as well as pastured meat, has been using software and an app from a company called Tend.
She wanted to digitise and streamline those laborious tasks into a piece of tech that she can view on her cellphone or computer.
Now she can input those harvest numbers into Tend, and the software can give her details, and advice, on how to manage her crop best for the coming harvest.
“We can use Tend to calculate the quantity of seed that we need to order based on the row feet of a particular crop that we want to harvest,” she says.
Syngenta GroupThere’s no shortage of tech for farmers to choose from.
Sygenta, the argri-tech giant based in Switzerland, offers farmers the software Cropwise, which uses AI and satellite imagery to guide farmers on what to do next with their crops, or alerts them to emergencies.
“It can tell the farmer that you need to visit the southeast corner of your field because something is not right about that section, such as a pest outbreak,” says Feroz Sheikh, chief information office of Syngenta Group. “And the system also has 20 years of our weather pattern data fed into a machine learning model, so we know exactly what kind of conditions lead to what outcome.”
With that data, farmers can cover their crops before, say, an incoming snap frost that could kill a large portion of their acreage.
In Germany, Jean-Pascal Lutze founded NoMaze to give farmers a deeper understanding of how different crops will perform under climate conditions.
Its software is rolling out this year. “We did field tests in a variety of environments and then created simulations through our computer model to give clients better insight into, say, how much water to use, how to get the maximum yield,” he explains.
Getty ImagesThe impact of these technologies might be felt by the consumer, says Heather Darby, an agronomist and soil specialist at the University of Vermont.
Bringing more food to market could translate to lower prices at the register, she says.
“When farmers get help to avoid crop failures, that could lead to a more controlled farm environment and a reliable and secure food system,” says Darby.
Back in Saskatchewan, Darby notes younger farmers are turning to technology while older tillers might resist major change.
He says that farmers need to be open to change.
“After all, when you think about it, some of these farms are multi-million-dollar businesses that are supporting multiple families. We need to embrace technology that works for us.”
“I heard someone say once: ‘If you treat farming as a business, it’s a great way of life, but if you treat your farming as a way of life, it’s a horrible business.'”
Business
Sugarcane price hike: Govt raises FRP to Rs 365/quintal for 2026-27, farmers to benefit from higher returns – The Times of India
The government has increased the fair and remunerative price (FRP) of sugarcane by Rs 10 to Rs 365 per quintal for the 2026-27 season beginning October, PTI reported.The decision was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.“The FRP will be Rs 365/quintal for a basic recovery rate of 10.25 per cent,” Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said after the meeting.The revised FRP is 2.81 per cent higher than the current rate of Rs 355 per quintal for the 2025-26 season.For every 0.1 per cent increase in sugar recovery above 10.25 per cent, the FRP will rise by Rs 3.56 per quintal, providing an incentive to mills for higher efficiency.To safeguard farmers supplying to mills with lower recovery rates, the government has decided that there will be no deduction in FRP for recovery below 9.5 per cent. In such cases, farmers will receive Rs 338.3 per quintal in the 2026-27 season.The production cost of sugarcane for 2026-27 has been estimated at Rs 182 per quintal, making the FRP 100.5 per cent higher than the cost.“Farmers are expected to get more than Rs 1 lakh crore,” Vaishnaw said.The move is expected to benefit nearly one crore sugarcane farmers, along with farm labourers and workers engaged in sugar mills.The FRP has been fixed based on recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) and consultations with state governments and stakeholders.The sugar sector supports the livelihoods of around five crore farmers and their families, and about five lakh workers directly employed in sugar mills, besides those involved in related activities such as transportation.Sugar mills are required to purchase sugarcane from farmers at the FRP or higher.Vaishnaw said the FRP has been increased every year over the past decade, and the latest revision will also support ethanol production from surplus sugarcane.On cane dues, he said that in the 2024-25 season, about Rs 1,02,209 crore, or nearly 99.5 per cent, of the total payable dues of Rs 1,02,687 crore had been cleared as of April 20, 2026.For the ongoing 2025-26 season, Rs 99,961 crore, or 88.6 per cent, has been paid out of total dues of Rs 1,12,740 crore.
Downing Street would not deny reports that Chancellor Rachel Reeves rowed with her US counterpart during a visit to Washington DC earlier this year.
Ms Reeves had an argument with Scott Bessent when she visited the US capital for the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, according to the Financial Times.
The Chancellor publicly criticised the US-led war against Iran before travelling across the Atlantic, prompting Mr Bessent to berate her on the sidelines of the gathering, the newspaper reported.
Ms Reeves reportedly hit back that she did not work for the US treasury secretary, and disliked how he had spoken to her, before reiterating her argument that America lacked clear goals going into the conflict and was not making the world safer.
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was asked if he would steer away from the reports, and appeared not to.
He did however insist Ms Reeves and her US counterpart have had “constructive” engagements since the Washington DC visit.
The spokesman said: “We would not get into private conversations. The Chancellor and the US treasury secretary have a good relationship.
“They have had constructive conversations together since the Chancellor’s visits to Washington.
“I think there is a readout from the US Department of Treasury, which made clear the productive nature of their relationship.”
The Chancellor emerged as one of the most outspoken UK Government critics of the US decision to go to war in Iran before travelling to the IMF meetings in April.
At the time, she described the war as a “folly” and said: “This is a war that we did not start. It was a war that we did not want.
“I feel very frustrated and angry that the US went into this war without a clear exit plan, without a clear idea of what they were trying to achieve.”
Business
Govt lists 40 sub-sectors for faster FDI clearance from border nations-check details – The Times of India
The government has identified 40 sub-sectors, including rare earth magnets and printed circuit boards, for expedited clearance of foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals from countries sharing land borders with India, PTI reported.Under the revised framework, proposals from countries such as China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Afghanistan in these sectors will be processed within 60 days, as per the updated standard operating procedure (SOP).The move follows a decision taken in March to fast-track FDI approvals in specified manufacturing sectors from these countries.However, the government has clarified that majority ownership and control of the investee entity must remain with resident Indian citizens or Indian-owned entities at all times.The 40 identified sub-sectors fall under six broad categories –capital goods manufacturing, electronic capital goods and electronic components, polysilicon and ingot-wafer production, advanced battery components, rare earth permanent magnets, and rare earth processing.These include manufacturing of insulation items, castings and forgings for thermal, hydro and nuclear power plants, machine tools, display components such as LCD and LED panels, camera modules, electronic capacitors, speakers and microphones, lithium-ion batteries, wearables, and rare earth metal and magnet processing facilities.The SOP also introduces detailed reporting norms for investments involving entities with direct or indirect ownership from land-bordering countries.“The reporting under these guidelines will be governed under the Foreign Exchange Management (Mode of Payment and Reporting of Non-debt Instruments) Regulations, 2019, and the information will be accessible by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI),” the DPIIT said.The responsibility for reporting lies with the Indian investee company, which must submit required details to the DPIIT before receiving foreign capital.“The reporting is to be made prior to the inward remittance of foreign capital. In cases which do not involve foreign capital inward remittances, the reporting is to be made prior to execution of the relevant transactions, including issuance/transfer of capital instruments, as the case may be,” it added.Investors will be required to disclose details such as shareholding patterns, beneficial ownership, organisational structure, promoters, board composition, key managerial personnel and control rights.The Indian entity will also need to provide incorporation details and disclose existing or proposed shareholding linked to entities from land-bordering countries.
Pakistan ‘hopeful’ efforts will lead to early resolution of US-Iran conflict: DPM Dar
Sugarcane price hike: Govt raises FRP to Rs 365/quintal for 2026-27, farmers to benefit from higher returns – The Times of India
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