Technology

This menu is about agricultural engineering and biotechnology.

Agricultural technology is the use of technology in agriculture, horticulture, and aquaculture and all other branches of agriculture through all production processes from site selection to processing of products with the aim of improving yield, efficiency, and profitability. Agricultural technology can be products, services or applications derived from agriculture that improve various input/output processes.

Advances in agricultural science, agronomy, and agricultural engineering and all other branches of agriculture have led to applied developments in agricultural technology. Historians have described a number of agricultural revolutions, which identify major shifts in agricultural practice and productivity over the years. These revolutions have been closely connected to technological improvements in the field.

A major turning point for agricultural technology is the Industrial Revolution, which introduced agricultural machinery to mechanize the labor of agriculture, greatly increasing farm worker productivity. In modern mechanized agriculture powered machinery has replaced many farm jobs formerly carried out by manual labor or by working animals such as oxen, horses and mules. Advances in the 19th century included the development of modern weather forecasting. Improvement to portable engines and threshing machines led to their widespread adoption.

The 20th century saw major advances in agricultural technologies, including the development of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and new agricultural machinery including mass produced tractors and agricultural aircraft for aerial application of pesticides. More recent advances have included agricultural plastics, genetically modified crops, improved drip irrigation, and soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. In the first decades of the 21st century, Information Age technologies have been increasingly applied to agriculture. Agricultural robots, agricultural drones and driverless tractors have found regular use on farms, while digital agriculture and precision agriculture make use of extensive data collection and computation to improve farm efficiency.