Perspectives of Precision Agriculture in Conservation Agriculture

Abstract

Conservation practices have clearly shown advantages in improving soil, water and air quality as well as reducing costs of operations. Conservation of natural resources is the base for a long-term sustainability of agricultural and natural ecosystems. Conservation Agriculture is not just conservation tillage, but a series of land management practices that include crop residues retention, cover crops, appropriate cropping system rotation, integrated pest management able to minimize land degradation. Because of the complexity associated with natural and agricultural ecosystems, a land management practice found to be sustainable at one site might not be equally sustainable at another site. Agricultural production systems are inherently variable due to spatial variation in soil properties, topography, and climate. To achieve the ultimate goal of sustainable cropping systems, variability must be considered both in space and time because the factors influencing crop yield have different spatial and temporal behavior. Advances in technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing and simulation modeling have created the possibility to assess the spatial and temporal variability present in the field and manage it with appropriate site-specific practices. Such approach is commonly called Precision Agriculture or site-specific crop and soil management. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the potential use of Precision Agriculture principles and technology for Conservation Agriculture. Examples of Precision Agriculture application through the integration of various techniques are presented to show the potential benefits of site-specific management of natural resources. Further perspectives are also discussed to link Precision Agriculture to Conservation Agriculture for a mosaic agriculture.