Using information technology in agriculture

By modernizing response farming and precision farming, farmers will improve their tactical decision making based on the quantitative observation of local environmental factors, such as physical parameters of soil, nutrients, water stress and crop diseases. Real time monitoring and modelling of crops will enable decisions by farmers on optimum farming practices relating to irrigation, pesticides and harvesting, using centrally stored reference data, automatically collected weather data and rainfall estimation from satellite images, in combination with some key data of social and economic constraints. Precision farming will contribute to sustainable agriculture development by trade-off between productivity and pollution and efficient use of resources.

Great efficiency gains can accrue by adopting input application techniques based on more site-specific information and appreciation of factors limiting crop development. As crop growth varies considerably due to local conditions, it is clear that applying inputs uniformly across large areas is not the right approach. Accurate field mapping with information collected from soil samples, pest monitoring and harvest yield data allows farmers to target the use of plant nutrients and crop protection products, leading to an efficient and judicious use of these products.

Highly developed systems use computers installed in farm machinery such as harvesters, fertilizer spreaders and crop sprayers, combined with mobile satellite Global Positioning Systems, enabling farmers in some situations to spatially vary the rate at which inputs are applied, thereby optimising the growth potential of the crop based on accurate determination of soil and crop needs. Precision agriculture does not, of course, always require a highly sophisticated technological approach. The principle remains that farmers in all situations can significantly improve the precision of their management techniques by collecting and analysing information from soil and plant testing.