Appropriate precision agriculture with site-specific cropping system management for marginal and small farmers.

Abstract

Abstract As conceived in the 'West', precision agriculture (PA) may be suitable for capital-intensive, high-technology regions in developed countries, monoculture affected by a single major soil-borne plant pathogen or pest in large farms, but not for peasant farming or the pest-complex-ridden unaided agriculture as found in less-developed countries (LDCs). PA is not about an abstract of characterization. Appropriate precision agriculture (APA) as site-specific appropriate precision agriculture (SSAPA) represents cropping system (CS) management with such geoinformatics and agri-informatics as are available for land, soil, water, meteorology and forecasting inputs and outputs by marketing, production, protection and other essential information provided through a decision support system through communication networking. Such management approaches are not ordinarily available to most of the farmers in LDCs. It is a prelude to site-specific cropping system management (SSCSM) as the chosen methodology of PA that is likely to be appropriate for marginal and small farmers (MSFs) of LDCs. Benchmark socio-economic information about the farmers of the district in which the experimental site Senkapur-on-Ajay is located, along with predictable trends of macro-meteorological information for 35 years, surface soil and profile survey data in the experimental site and around were made available. In addition, computation of crop suitability was done by conducting a field experiment in a rice-based CS with annual crop rotation as cropping sequence (cs) and when each cs has been rotated for 3 years it is considered a CS. Nine rice and vegetable-based CSs and 27 cs were compared in terms of cultural practices with improved package (IP) and farmer's package (FP), crop growth and productivity, soil nutrient management systems and nutrient use efficiency, appropriate integrated pest management (AIPM), pest:natural enemies (P:NE) balance, energy use efficiency and economics approximately each with several variables. Further information and advice including pest management decisions were provided through marketing information and intelligence, as well as through a communication networking system (CNS) with farmers reporting on pest intensities, with responses from the researcher together with the farmers by means of visits and mobile telephone connections with some local leading farmers, and a post-experimental survey of the targeted farmers on the utilities and problems, if any, on the perception on APA with SSCSM in a 10 km radius of the experimental site. The farmers were satisfied with the information provided during the experiment. This methodology can be adopted for as many locations as possible, wherever similar trials in different sub-agro-ecosystems in various agro-ecosystems are conducted. The methodologies have to be fine-tuned with continuous and active experimentation and communication networking.