Precision agriculture and information technology

As everyone knows, knowledge (along with its less-sophisticated sibling, information) is power. For a long time, detailed knowledge (in agriculture) has been generally inaccessible or was prohibitively expensive to acquire. Advances in electronics, communications, and software over the past several decades have removed those earlier impediments. Inexpensive sensors and microprocessors — coupled with integrating software, mobile power sources, and satellite communications — now enable farmers and natural resource managers to collect vast amounts of geo-referenced data (Auernhammer, 1994; Jahns, 2000). Further downstream processing of that data produces meaningful information and ultimately, knowledge (Udink ten Cate and Dijkhuizen, 1999). A number of this special issue’s papers deal with technologies for information gathering and application, which often appear under the terminology ‘precision agriculture’ and ‘information technologies’. Natural, inherent variability between and within fields means that mechanized farming could traditionally only apply crop treatments for ‘average’ soil, nutrient, moisture, weed, and growth conditions. Necessarily, this has led to overand under-applications of herbicides, pesticides, irrigation, and fertilizers — except on rare, average sites. Precision agriculture technologies are being developed that can sense micro-site specific conditions in real time and can automatically adjust treatments to meet each site’s unique needs. Richard Plant, in his paper, attempts to distinguish between site-specific crop management and precision agriculture, wherein the former refers to cropping and the latter is more inclusive of all, information-centric agricultural activities. Hermann Auernhammer’s paper tries to make a similar distinction. Dr. Plant also notes that, in intent, precision agriculture is more akin to traditional agricultural practices, wherein small-scale, non-mechanized farming permitted spatially variable treatments. Mao-hua Wang’s paper states that China’s ‘precision cultivation’ approach to farming has been practicing these ideas for many years through the small, rural farmer’s intimate knowledge of each small corner of each field.