Content area
Full Text
There has been extensive coverage in the farm media recently of a revolution that has been in the making for a number of years--precision agriculture. Emerging technologies and innovation are driving its development and continuing to evolve, promising to have a lasting impact on the agricultural industry. Precision agriculture has developed to the point where those tied to agriculture (growers, industry, universities, and governmental agencies) have an opportunity to help direct a more efficient system of agricultural production and at the same time promote an improved land stewardship. Although its potential impact cannot be clearly measured at this time, many current educational, research, and environmental programs may need to be reviewed with these new technologies in mind. Best Management Practices will eventually need to be rewritten. For many, sustainable agriculture, soil quality, and integrated crop management will take on a greater meaning. However, with the monetary restraints of many university and agency programs, and the expense to industry of creating and implementing these technologies, there is a greater need for cooperation in overseeing precision agriculture's development and wise use. It is hoped that any environmental shortcomings of our current system, which places its foundation in the Green Revolution of the 1960s, can be significantly improved upon by precision agriculture.
Definitions
While precision agriculture (alternatively called site-specific management) is commonly associated with terms like "on-the-go," "variable rate," or "farming by the foot" application of crop production inputs, the practice can be simply defined as an application of an input across a field based upon some evaluation of the variability of need for the input. The variability can be either spatial or temporal in nature. The input can be any input, such as seed, fertilizer, insecticide, drainage tile, subsoiling, etc. The input can vary by rate (amount) or type (e.g., two kinds of herbicide). Precision agriculture implies that the application of the input will not be uniform, but the analysis of variability may warrant such an application. With this definition in mind, a farmer who spot sprays a field for weed control, or adjusts a fertilizer rate for a sandy knoll in his fields, is practicing precision agriculture. Irrigation scheduling, fertigation, and banding of fertilizers can be thought of as precision agriculture practices. Strictly speaking, precision agriculture...