Big Data in Practice

12 JOHN DEERE How Big Data Can Be Applied On Farms

Background

Agricultural manufacturer John Deere have always been a pioneering company. Their eponymous founder personally designed, built and sold some of the first commercial steel ploughs. These made the lives of settlers moving into the Midwest during the middle of the 19th century much easier and established the company as an American legend. Often at the forefront of innovation, it is no surprise that they have embraced Big Data enthusiastically – assisting pioneers with the taming of the virtual wild frontier just as it did with the real one.

What Problem Is Big Data Helping To Solve?

The world’s population is growing rapidly, which means there is always going to be an increasing demand for more food. With the idea of genetically modified food still not appealing to public appetites, increasing the efficiency of the production of standard crops is key to meeting this growing demand. To this end, John Deere have launched several Big Data-enabled services that let farmers benefit from crowdsourced, real-time monitoring of data collected from their thousands of users. This data enables farmers to make informed decisions on anything from which crops to plant where to how much fertilizer to use.

How Is Big Data Used In Practice?

Myjohndeere.com is an online portal that allows farmers to access data gathered from sensors attached to their own machinery as they work the fields, as well as aggregated data from other users ...