Embedding a precision agriculture service into a farm management information system - ifarma/PreFer

Abstract

Today, bridging precision agriculture (PA) with farm management is a high priority. To respond to this challenge, a precision fertilization service for extended crops, namely ‘PreFer’ (developed by 'Ecodevelopment' enterprise), was embedded as a new module in a cloud-based farm management information system (FMIS), namely ‘ifarma’ (developed by 'Agrostis' enterprise). The new PreFer module preserves the full potential of the original service methodology, while taking advantage of all fundamental functionalities of the ifarma platform. PreFer as a service uses a GIS to store and process the farmers’ geodatabases, which are fed from multiple sources, such as soil surveys, satellite data, yield monitors, etc. This GIS is also used to feed the machine learning algorithms of ‘PreFer’ with the required data to produce the prescription maps for both broadcasting and topdressing fertilizations. Then, all tables and maps are transferred from the GIS to the platform upon their production, thus becoming immediately available to the farmers. The ‘ifarma/PreFer' module was tested during the 2022 cultivation season, showing that fully meets farmers' requirements. This work also indicates that synergies like this are more than necessary to create added-value in commercial precision agriculture.