Precision farming practices

Abstract

In the past decade, farmers around the globe have witnessed what some consider an agricultural revolution. Driven by economic and environmental pressures, precision agriculture has emerged as a flurry of technological enhancements to traditional farm machinery and management tools. One does not have to closely examine a field to notice that the crop often thrives in certain areas while growing poorly in others. An intuitive approach to addressing this problem is to apply different amounts of seed, fertilizer, or other inputs according to the specific needs of the particular area of the field. For a very small field, manual control of inputs may be possible; however, for larger fields, this approach is unrealistic, if not impossible. Furthermore, this approach is subjective because control decisions are based on the operator's opinion and have no quantitative basis. In recent years, several technologies have emerged and made their way into the agricultural realm. These technologies provide the basis to realize the precision farming vision and to objectively manage agricultural land according to its spatially variable needs. Traditionally, whole-field application rates of inputs such as fertilizer and pesticide have been determined according to the maximum needs within a field. Precision farming practices significantly improve farm production in terms of net profit and limit environmental pollution potential.