Precision agriculture (PA), also known as satellite agriculture, is a farm management approach that uses Information Technology (IT) to ascertain that crops and soil receive precisely what they need for optimum growth and productivity with the goal of ensuring profitability, and sustainability, and protection of the environment.
By operation, precision agriculture relies on specialized equipment, software, and IT services that enable access to real-time data about crop conditions, soil health, and other relevant information such as hyper-local weather predictions, etc. The data obtained is used by Predictive Analytics Software to guide farmers on crop rotation, optimal planting time, harvesting time, and soil management, among others.
Also, sensors in the farm/field measure the moisture content and temperature of the soil and surrounding air. In the same vein, satellites and robotic drones provide farmers with real-time images of individual plants, and information or data from the images can be processed and integrated with sensors and other data to provide guidance for immediate and future farm decisions, such as the exact soil that needs water and when or where to plant a particular crop.
Agriculture control centers integrate sensor data and imaging input with other data to empower farmers with the ability to identify soil that requires treatment and to determine the optimum amount of water, fertilizers, and pesticides to apply.
Overall, precision farming helps farmers to avoid resource wastage and prevent erosion while ensuring that the soil has just the right amount of nutrients for optimum growth of the plants. It also reduces the risk associated with farming and helps to control the farm’s environmental impact.
Meanwhile, the use of mobile apps, smart sensors, drones, and cloud computing has made precision agriculture practicable for farmers’ groups as well as smallholders.
Source: AgroNigeria
