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GPS Meets Agriculture for Precision Farming
mskfisher writes "NASA Science News is reporting a story on a NASA project called Ag20/20, which involves farmers using GPS-aided crop and field analysis to improve accuracy and yields.
Instead of blanketing the whole area with a set level of pesticide or fertilizer, they can now vary it via computer, based on IR and soil data gathered from aircraft, satellites, and tractor-mounted sensors."
This is hardly original. A simple google search and one of the more interesting results here
From the article:
Indeed, perhaps only a decade or so hence, Isbell will climb down from his tractor holding a palm-sized computer in direct contact with Earth orbiting satellites.
John Deere is already selling GPS-receiver equipped tractors (marketed as "StarFire receivers") that look about the size of a palm.
The future isn't what it used to be.
The lumber companies in Canada have been using GIS to better map their harvesting. They also have reduced the impact by being able to better utilize the mesh of old bush roads. Plus they get a better idea of the size and age of trees by looking at IR images.
GIS has also been used on farming with large farms - a farmer couldn't possibly monitor 1000's of hectres.
Check the Faculty of Environmental Studies page at the University of Waterloo. They have all kinds of cool uses for GIS - sea ice studies are pretty interesting.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Growing up in rural Iowa (no stoplights within a 20 mile radius even today), I can tell you that this is not a new concept. Heck, I remember the local paper (no web site, they're that much behind the times) running a multi-part story about farmers using GPS in 1996 or 1997.
Think For Yourself. Question Authority.
At least since the late 80's. I used to read some surveyor/gps magazines (like GPS World) back then, my father is in the remote sensing field, and this sort of thing used to be reported on monthly. I remember one article where the farmer used DEM type maps, ArcView, a WADGPS system for accurate placement, and a Newton (remember those) for data collection.
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This isn't really news. I suppose since it is being done with GPS it is "news for nerds" but Valmont industries (maker of Valley Sprinkler systems) has been putting sensors on their sprinkler systems for years. Then the sprinkler will talk to the farmers computer and let him know if there are problems with the soil or whatever else. The sprinkler also distributes fertilizer and the like automatically down to about 3 sq. feet.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
As many have pointed out, precision farming is not a new thing. Check this link for a bunch of companies involved:
e nt /Precision_Farming/
http://www.prairielinks.com/aglinks/Farm_Equipm
The GPS allows them to do some neat stuff not mentioned in the article.
Some systems can keep maps of the paths that equipment took traveling over a feild. This information can be used to guide the operator down the exact same path within an inch, or 2, on the next application. This can minimize crop damage from getting run over, and also reduces soil compaction.
Some systems can be programmed to know how wide of a swath the equipment covers, and can then guide the operator to get very accurate coverage without skips or overlap. This functionality is particularly valuable when making applications that can not be easily seen by the operator, such as sprays.
Better systems can even have a limited auto pilot feature that is integrated into the tractor. Once you are on track you tell the system to take over and it steers.
Cool stuff!
Kevin
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
It would help if the value of grain by the bushel had ever increased.
Right now the price of Hard Red Winter Wheat is the same per bushel as it was in 1902.
Meanwhile, the cost of a tractor or a harvester has increased by about 10,000 percent.
Actually, the amount of money paid American farmers isn't that much, and it keeps farms from going under and being turned into range land or housing developments.
It helps keep the price of bread at the store the same decade after decade.
I live in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is all farming up here. About 6 years ago, I taught an introductory HTML class. There was a combine salesman in attendance, he wanted to learn how to make a web page to help him sell combines. He had a brochure detailing gps equipped combines and sprayers that have sensors built in, etc. I asked him how many % of the combines he sells has this stuff built in. He said all combines are sold fully loaded now (that includes a cooler, air conditioning, air shock mounted seat, stereo system, gps guidance, computer monitoring systems on the output (they check for grain being wasted) etc. The harvest data from the gps system is even stored on a ram-card so that it can be fed into the seeder and sprayers! Literally all he sold were fully equipped. The farmer's rationalle: what is another 10 or 20 thousand when you are already spending $250,000 on one piece of equipment! alsdf
My cousin-in-law is from an Iowa farming family but has a knack for technology. The result is, he started working with an Iowa company to develop and deploy these a few years ago. They've been deploying these in the field (quite literally)for the last three years; he gave me an excellent demonstration at Christmas last year. They can tell everything about crop yields and, most significantly, remember the information and send it to a unit in the fertilizer spreaders to make sure the parts of the field with the lowest yield receive the most fertilizer. His father's farm, which has been doing this for three years, has already seen a more even distribution (and hence large overall production) across their 400 acres.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
* The cost of the tractor per bushel has plummeted (how many acres could you seed, plow, etc. with that tractor in 1902)
* And the cost of labor per bushel has plummeted (how many people did it take to harvest a bushel in 1902)
* And the yield per acre as shot up (if they haven't then I guess Monsanto hasn't been doing their job)
Like every other industry, farming benefits from efficiencies of scale.
I am the last person on earth to want to see farm land turned into housing developments, but try not to be so simplistic that you insult your readers.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I write software for this industry for a living. We collect field boundaries, fertilizer and pesticide data (types and amounts used, application method), and other farming practices. When it comes time to harvest the crop, a device called a yield monitor (GPS plus flow and other sensors) collects data on how much crop is harvested at a given point in the field.
It's an idea that had been gaining a lot of momentum in the farming industry for a while, but it is starting to become apparent it is not as useful as they thought. The growers like the pretty pictures the GPS maps give them, but their utility as tools is severely limited. Changing levels of chemical application in a field does not have as much of an impact as you would think. Not to mention the education level of the average ag worker is not all that high, so data collection is a difficult process.
What IS useful however is statistical analysis of these farming practices. Seed companies like Pioneer have universities run tests on their varieties and report on the results. The problem is that these tests are all conducted on tiny "test plots" of a fraction of an acre. It's simply too small a sample to get reliable results. With the data we have collected, we can state with a fair degree of certainty what farming practices will result in higher yields. Conventional vs No-Till farming, what crop order to rotate, what row spacing to plant at, etc.
--
David Christpher Asher
AgVenture, LLC.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego