Part 1 — Precision Agriculture Overview
Precision Agriculture -> More with less. Avoid over doing or under doing
Precision Agriculture = Measure + Analyze + Manage
Precision Agriculture -> Future of food and environment
In today’s farming, Precision Ag [2] is a standard practice than a luxury. We spend thousands of rupees in fertilizers, pesticides, machineries, water, seed, and more. Even one or two un-necessary/wrong usage leads to huge losses. Agriculture is increasingly a narrow profit margin business. Every saving you achieve translates to your profits and scale. Precision Ag helps greatly in helping to only do “what is necessary, when necessary”. Precision Ag is data driven than intuition driven.
Precision Ag is data driven than intuition driven.
Precision Ag is more than just technology, it is a complete farm management with the goal of optimizing the returns and preserve resources.
GPS [3] kickstarted the precision agriculture technique. GPS helped in locating things on farm that becomes base for many other technologies developed.
One major concept that is ignored and is critical — “Variability”.
Variability can take many forms:
- Variability in soil water tension.
- Variability in acid / base combination of soil.
- Variability in terrain, hard/loose soil, water holding capacity and many many more.
More importantly, these variabilities can exist within a single farm. Generally, studies show many varying parameters from acre to acre!
Using same treatments and actions across a huge farm is either “over doing” or “under doing” which leads to loss in profits, yields and loss in land yielding value. Ex: Using extra nitrogen and phosphorous is a major pollution due to agriculture.
Precision agriculture involves more than sensors / technologies. For example, when you run your machineries, equipments (tractors etc.) the path in which wheels run on the field is basically a no yield zone! Precision Ag also suggests when to run these equipments, where exactly to run and repeated runs on the same track reducing areas of no yields. So, do not limit yourself in thinking Precision Ag is just a technology. It is a collection of technologies, guidance in a whole a Farm Management Process.
Precision Agriculture = Measure + Analyze + Manage
Precision agriculture involves many diverse areas. To name a few:
- Soil management
- Crop management
- Seasonal and weather effects
- Physical structures of the land — Terrain/Flat land, Loose/Hard soil, Dry / Wet soil
Precision Ag tools broadly fall into the following 3 categories:
- Cost Management Tools: What is cheaper, better, profitable, necessary, seasonal, pricing etc.
- On Field Management Tools: Fertilizers, Soil management, Yield management, Water Management, Environment Management.
- Risk Management Tools: Loans, insurance, crop selection, market, documenting on the processes and farming.
On an average, various studies shows, Precision Ag can save up to 20–50% of current cost. Of course, it depends on how efficient your current processes are, but, adopting Precision Ag process will surely yield double digit savings!
However, the problem now is — I have so many Precision Ag techniques, but, what is suitable for a specific use case? How do farmers choose what works best for them? Where do they get started?
There is a huge opportunity here in making the technology usable for our farmers helping them to grow more, grow better, make profits and save environment!
Next, see Part 2 — Digital Agriculture.
If you are interested in Smart Farming — Do checkout — Fasal — Grow More Grow Better — https://fasal.co/. We are revolutionizing farming in India!
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