Precision Farming

The electronics revolution of the last several decades has spawned two technologies that will impact agriculture in the next decade. These technologies are Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS).

Along with GIS and GPS there have appeared a wide range of sensors, monitors and controllers for agricultural equipment such as shaft monitors, pressure transducers and servo motors.

Together they will enable farmers to use electronic guidance aids to direct equipment movements more accurately, provide precise positioning for all equipment actions and chemical applications and, analyze all of that data in association with other sources of data (agronomic, climatic, etc).

Precision farming should not be thought of as only yield mapping and variable rate fertilizer application and evaluated on only one or the other. Precision farming technologies will affect the entire production function (and by extension, the management function) of the farm.

The holy grail of precision agriculture research will be the ability to define a Decision Support System (DSS) for whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources.

It can be said that the practice of precision agriculture was enabled by the advent of GPS and GNSS. The farmer's and/or researcher's ability to locate their precise position in a field allows for the creation of maps of the spatial variability of as many variables as can be measured (e.g. crop yield, terrain features/topography, organic matter content, moisture levels, nitrogen levels, pH, EC, Mg, K, etc.). Further, these maps can be interpolated onto a common grid for comparison.

Precision agriculture aims to optimize field-level management with regard to: crop science: by matching farming practices more closely to crop needs (e.g. fertilizer inputs); environmental protection: by reducing environmental risks and footprint of farming (e.g. limiting leaching of nitrogen); economics: by boosting competitiveness through more efficient practices (e.g. improved management of fertilizer usage and other inputs).

Precision agriculture also provides farmers with a wealth of information to: build up a record of their farm; improve decision-making; foster greater traceability; enhance marketing of farm products; improve lease arrangements and relationship with landlords; and enhance the inherent quality of farm products (e.g. protein level in bread-flour wheat). Decisions may be based on decision-support models (crop simulation models and recommendation models), but in the final analysis it is up to the farmer to decide in terms of business value and impacts on the environment.