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by fanquake
3615 days ago
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Precision agriculture is all about controlling variability. When you have a small plot of all the same soil, under the same weather conditions, your really not going to have much, if any variability, and probably won't actually need any precision agriculture. As opposed to a 400ha paddock where you can have 3 different soil types and different weather at either end of the field. As for this technology being used on a larger scale, I'd be really interested to see the cost for a similar setup over a few thousand hectares, and what sort of efficiencies might be gained compared to our current system. However I'm not convinced it'll replace our machinery any time soon. The other interesting use for this would be, if it gained a large enough user base, the sharing of different planting setups and rotations for nutrient replacement. i.e planting crop x and y in rotation, or interrow with crops a and b. |
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I think this will be the real win of this technology eventually. Most if not all first world farmers understand that over the lifetime of their farm doing proper crop rotation increases yields but there is still a very reasonable instinctual reluctance to give up the short term profit of a high yield crop in order to plant a rotation crop of less profitable plants to keep the soil up correctly. Evening out that profit per field would probably be a great boon to operations that are too small to rotate entire fields.
It would also probably be an excellent way to get non farmers involved in the food production chain, especially in semi-rural areas. I grew up just in front of a community pasture which served as a grazing ground for three or four different farmer's herds and a couple of people who kept a couple of milk cows for local cheese making and stuff like that. Extending that concept to plants would be great, a giant community garden where people could plant crops that they are interested in and receive the yields at the end of the growing period. Larger farming outfits could plant around the regular people and ultimately keep costs down because of subsidy. Round out five or six gardens with some cash crops like wheat, soy or corn while locals use some of the field to grow their own grocery vegetables.