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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."
Will this improve the quality of crop circles?
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
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 fact that satelite usage is now cheap enough to make this cost effective.
/., this is the one that makes me most optimistic about the space program.
We complain that space is not being pushed enough, and THIS is what will make people invest in NASA's technology. Whenever the demand exists for a product, the market finds a way to deliver it as cheaply as possible, in order to maximize profit margins. This is the technology that will enable the space industry to bring the cost per pound of lifting stuff down.
Of all of the space stories in the past year that I have seen on
The only part that worries me is that there are not enough satelites to fill current demand, so planes are being used instead as the inferior alternative.
"Satellite images, which require more time to downlink and process, can take from 2 to 7 days to reach a farmer.
Such delays won't be a problem forever, though. 'Technology is advancing quickly and more of these commercial satellites are being launched each year,' he added."
I'm a concientious
Just another example of the man keeping the farmer down. First its GPS. Then its fences around the field. Next comes the little collars that were in that prison movie with Rutger Hauer that we can trigger to blow from space.
While we are on that space theme i would like to say i would like to see a big laser make popcorn out of a whole field of corn almost like that real genious movie. Now that would be cool.
WAIT!!
Could that be why we are GPS'n the fields?
Mmmmmmmm...popcorn.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Alternatively we could get a clue and start paying the farmers what the market will bear, instead of subsidising them to produce grossly-resource intensive crap that destroys our health, screws the environment, costs us billions in tax (for subsidies), whilst millions starve, and only agrichemical multinationals and food processors benefit.
some , further reading...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
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.
Best Slashdot Co
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 is scary what get marked as "insightful" here.
Producing more and more food in an environmentally healthy way is basic requirement due to the population growth.
This is completely ortogonal to the question of solving the social and political problems that provent a fair distribution of the produced food and keep the population growth going.
Even if we do solve these problems in the best case we should expect the population to top in one or two generations at 15 to 20 billion people, due to the age distribition of the world population, and cultural resistance to change.
We need to fight at both fronts to get through this situation without mass starvation worse than everything seen on this planet before combined.
We need the technical means to increase production that much without destroying the environment in the process, and we need the social, economical and political changes that ensure this technoclogy is employed as well as ensure the population growth does eventually top in acceptable ways.
Believing we can get through with either technical or social changes alone is dangerously naive.
* 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