Coming into Governor’s School I wasn’t super ecstatic to be here.  I was interested in agriculture as a whole and I understood how important agriculture is to our daily lives but besides that, I honestly thought it was dull.  I envisioned a summer of harvesting corn or milking cows, which would all be great experiences, but I didn’t expect to be learning about the technology that runs the agricultural field. 

We learned about how drones are being developed to aid in precision agriculture, how plants can be grown without soil, and we toured a lab that has million-dollar machines that can determine exactly what the genetic makeup of a substance is.  We also learned of the importance of these developing technologies because we will not be able to feed the growing population if we continue to farm as we do today. 

The population is estimated to reach its maximum by 2050, approximately 10 billion people, and we do not have the land to grow crops and house that amount of people.  This slightly frightened me but also fascinated me because we have no other option but to advance our agricultural practices. 

What would the future look like?  Would it be filled with massive vertical farms, drones that can diagnose and treat plant disease, and robots that will fully automate the growing process? Or would it contain some unknown technology that will change how we live our lives? Who knows, maybe we will just live on Mars.

-sg