Sustainability is becoming a growing concern amongst many farmers. This includes Sutton Morgan. Sutton is a farmer that owns Oasis Organics, a 2,500 acre certified organic farm in southeast California’s Imperial Valley.

However, like many of his fellow sustainable-minded farmers, Morgan is feeling the pains of running an organic farm. They are all facing higher production costs and shortages of labor. The Oasis Organics owner stated, “I cannot use chemicals as an organic farmer, so my option is labor. Weeding by hand, and with minimum-wage laws and rising labor costs, I’m forced to look for other options, so I can stay in business.”

Morgan turned to an agricultural engineer in Yuma, Arizona named Mark Siemens. Siemens works on combining technology and farming. He is currently developing new machines that will improve the sustainability and profitability of organic production.

One of the advances in farming technology sees a camera-based machine that can tell the difference between actual crops and weeds. As the machine assesses the data, a sprayer will administer weed-killer to each weed individually.This research has received the support of the United States Department of Agriculture, receiving a $2.7 million grant.

Siemens stated, “We conducted field trials to determine their efficacy and the amount that hand-weeding labor requirements were reduced. We also provided the opportunity to have growers evaluate the technology on their farm so they could make their own decisions about how the technology would fit into their farming operation.”

As Siemens tests his prototypes, he is working with farmers such as Sutton Morgan, as well as Yuma’s Steve Alameda. A partner with TopFlavor Farms, Alameda said, “We do what we need to do to give indication of where we need help, and then their expertise kicks in to really solve the big problems and get into the details.They come up with practical things that work for us. And it’s all about trying to stay in business.”

This kind of collaboration brings to joy to Siemens, who said, “I enjoy solving engineering-type problems and helping people with technology. It’s a good feeling when you share what you’ve learned and people benefit from that information.”