Farming as feedback control

This paper surveys a brief history of agriculture, demonstrating how advances in genetics, equipment, and management practices have resulted in the remarkable productivity experienced by today´s agriculture industrial complex. We then show that progress in each of these areas is, in part, the result of new solutions to a feedback-control problem, whether it be for selective breeding, exploiting new sensor and actuation technology on a tractor or harvester, or using advanced crop and weather models to make better decisions about irrigation or pesticides. The paper concludes with an invitation for the controls community to explore the varied and important feedback-control problems in this area, emphasizing that sustainably feeding the exponentially growing global population, without harming the environment, will demand creative, careful thinking for years to come.