From the tweet stream February 22, 2018

From my economic sense blog post - The 'free-from' Nash equilibrium food marketing strategy.

A meta analysis summarizing 21 years of research related to GMO corn. Results - healthier and better yielding. 

"Results provided strong evidence that GE maize performed better than its near isogenic line: grain yield was 5.6 to 24.5% higher with lower concentrations of mycotoxins (−28.8%), fumonisin (−30.6%) and thricotecens (−36.5%)....The results support the cultivation of GE maize, mainly due to enhanced grain quality and reduction of human exposure to mycotoxins."

Beyond proof of concept - blockchain

“Before the blockchain test, it took Walmart six days, 18 hours and 26 minutes to trace the mangoes back to their original source, he said. Blockchain not only cut that time down to an unbelievable 2.2 seconds” - from https://progressivegrocer.com/grocers-embrace-blockchain-new-era-transparency 

Corn may soon be fixing its own nitrogen:

"Pivot Bio is on a mission to replace all nitrogen fertilizer with microbes that adhere to the crop’s root system and spoon-feed the crop each day. These microbes mature as the crop grows, matching the supply of nitrogen to the need of each plant."  - https://medium.com/@ktemme/the-crop-microbiome-holds-the-future-of-fertilizer-68ce67d07ad 

Facial recognition for managing cattle.

If you think that is cool, check out  Image-based ex-vivo drug screening for patients.

Some research on gene drives.

Follow me at @AgEconomist 

Food Costs, Satellite Data, and Diversity within Species

Russ Roberts talks with Tomar Haspel about food costs, animal welfare, and modern agriculure on EconTalk.

A couple great discussions regarding the future ag macro environment and satellite based crop data in finance.

More on the myth of monoculture - biodiversity within species in Nature.

"the health of an ecosystem may depend not only on the number of species present, but also on the diversity of their traits. …Equally important to keeping an ecosystem healthy and resilient are the species' different characteristics and the things they can do — measured in terms of specific traits such as body size or branch length."

See also:

Big Data + Genomics  Not Your Grandparent's Monoculture
Crop Diversity

How Big Data and Genomics are Crushing the Myth of Monoculture

From: Multi-hybrid corn planter trials in Corn and Soybean Digest (link):

"If multi-cultivar planters gain significant market share in coming years, farmers could see a big shift in the corn hybrids and soybean varieties available to plant in unique field environments, says Jason Webster, Beck’s Hybrids research agronomist…….“We may have customized hybrids for certain soils that never would have been released in the past,” he says."

This is in line with what I have said before (see Big Data + Genomics ≠ Your Grandparent's Monoculture):

"the disruptions of new technology, big data and genomics (applications like FieldScripts, ACRES, MyJohnDeere or the new concept Kinze planters that switch hybrids on the go etc.) will require the market to continue to offer a range of choices in seeds and genetics to tailor to each producer's circumstances of time and place. There are numerous margins that growers look at when optimizing their seed choices and it will require a number of firms and seed choices to meet these needs as the industry's focus moves from the farm and field level to the data gathered by the row foot with each pass over the field."

The convergence if big data and genomics is driving more diversity into every seed in every field across every acre.