GPS Meets Agriculture for Precision Farming 167
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."
GPS Dog Collar? (Score:1)
That's not the farmer's problem; he's just behind the times.
A real precision farmer would have an AIBO.
Re:GPS Dog Collar? (Score:2, Funny)
GPS jewels could be useful for (say) your girlfriend. Imagine, you go with her to the shopping center and suddenly you realize that she's gone somewhere else while you were looking at (say) computer games. Hence, you fire up your GPS reciver and trace your girlfriend in the shopping center
Re:GPS Dog Collar? (Score:1)
Of course they would. Girlfriends are always wanting to know where you put your jewels.
GPS Mine Clearing ? (Score:1)
Land mine clearing is a tedious and extremely dangerous job. Everyday there are people being blown up, when trying to clearing up land-mines.
Since GPS has the whole world covered, and many "birds" (satellites) are flying over us are equipped with precision lenses, then... why don't we some how use the GPS precision measuring technique, along with the robo-mine-clearer, and start automate the land-mine clearing job ?
Although agriculture is important, if the land is mined, performing agricultural works on the land will be VERY DANGEROUS.
I sincerely hope NASA and
Re:GPS Mine Clearing ? (Score:1)
While the "orbital laser cannons" might be an option in future, it may cost too much, for now.
Right now, we still need something - not necessarily LIVE PERSONS, - to either de-activate, or explode the land mines.
I believe that there are already "robots" which are specially designed to destroy active land mines. All is needed is someone to GPS enable those robots, and set up the network of those "birds" (satellites) so to coordinate the land mine search-'n-destroy mission.
Re:GPS Mine Clearing ? (Score:1)
The only problem is the high cost; both for the landmine detectors & the robotics and the personel and the tracking/database software. I'll bet only the US military would be will to pay for it, then only when US personel might be at risk.
'cept for all that, it sounds like a really neat idea.
.
Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:1)
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:2)
That's a nice theory but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. About the only farms that get substancial government subsidies are wheat, corn, and other grain farms. Almost all of the subsidies go to huge corporate farms (who do you think can afford all of those lobbiests anyway?). And most of the subsidies go to areas where you're not going to have a huge amount of success building another housing development.
On the other hand, the smaller, family-owned farms are often closer to cities (under a much greater tax pressure and regulation pressure to sell to a developer), selling crops that don't get subsidies (fruits and vegetables) , and, usually, subsidizing thier lifestyle with at least one other full time job. Check out Montgomory Co in MD or the Willamette Valley in OR for an idea on what the few remaining family farms look like.
I'm not opposed to farming subsidies, but subsidies as they currently exists don't do anything that their supporters CLAIM that they do.
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:2)
Farmers are GROSSLY under-paid and under-apriciated
Where the hell do you think all that food you eat comes from, the sky?
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:2)
Maybe that's just the natural economic result of modern technology. Ever since Henry Ford came along, very few cars have been handcrafted by individual proprietors. If such a crafstman tried to compete on price with major manufacturers, they would be grossly underpaid. Why would food be any different?
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:1)
Compare/contrast with the wine industry, which tends to be somewhere between a Monopolistic Competition/Oligopoly-type scenario, precisely because there is a discernable difference between wines (and most of those that consume wine care about that difference). As a result, you can still get away with JUST being a winery. I don't know why anyone expects to be able to get a decent living with being just a crop farmer. You CAN survive by living off the land, but you can only make money at it if you have serious economies of scale. Unless you have something to differentiate you from those that do, you die. That's the nature of Capitalism.
What bothers me isn't that farmers are getting paid not to farm, it's that there's no good way to get farmers to do something else with some of their time (to make real $) without prying them from their ancestral homes. In this age where the potential of remote work is so real (ask the many companies that are having their employees work from home), why can't we retrain farmers to telecommute part time?
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Right now the price of Hard Red Winter Wheat is the same per bushel as it was in 1902.
Meanwhile, the cost of a tractor or a harvester has increased by about 10,000 percent.
Actually, the amount of money paid American farmers isn't that much, and it keeps farms from going under and being turned into range land or housing developments.
It helps keep the price of bread at the store the same decade after decade.
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:4, Informative)
* 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.
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:1)
While tractors are more efficient now, they aren't efficient enough to make up the difference in cost. And besides, the only time that efficiency counts, is when the farmer gets more land. If a farmer's family had 200 acres in 1902, and still has 200 acres now, efficiency doesn't change. That $7,000 grain harvester (combine) puchased in 1902 does the same ammount of work as that quarter-million dollar 2002 model combine.
The cost of labor per bushel has NOT plummeted. Sure it takes less people now, but the labor of each person costs more. Legally, farmers can't pay somebody $5/hr to work on their farms. They have to pay minimum wage, unemployment, etc... just as the large corporations do. There is a little bit of leeway, but not that much. Even to hire a "temp" worker from a staffing agency at $6/hr costs the farmer from $12-$16 per hour.
And yeild per acre has gone up, yes. But not in reality. When a farmer has water rights for their farm, that is based on the "waterable" land when the original water rights were assigned. Out of 200 acres, maybe only 150 acres has official water rights, depending on the layout of the land (water won't travel up hill.) With newer technologies, such as sprinkler irrigation systems, the farmer has been able to farm all 200 acres. BUT, now the farmer is getting fined for using too much water, even though the watering method is more efficient. In a sense, too much of their land is receiving water, even though their total water usage has gone down.
I am not pulling this information out of a newspaper article I have read somewhere. My parents and grandparents, and generations before them, are and were farmers. My dad complains about tractor cost (and repair costs are another can of worms,) labor cost, and the fines they are being charged for trying to make better use of their land. As a result, farmers are leaving more of their land dormant, just so they don't have to pay the fines.
I know the reality of the farmers' financial situation. That is why I chose not to carry on the family tradition, as are many other people. The large corporate farmers are making quite a bit of money, the small family farms are not. And I don't know of any farmer in my area that has received a "bonus" or supplement from the government for being a farmer. Not a one.
I did read an article a while back that had some numbers. For that $1.50 loaf of bread you buy in the store, about $.03 of that is paid to the farmer for his work. There were similar rates of inflation for eggs, milk, vegetables, etc. A lot of this is caused by the amount of goods we import from other countries. They can offer it to the US cheaper because they aren't under a lot of restrictions, such as chemicals, and can get what is banned in the USA cheaper than what we can use. NAFTA only opened this gap even more.
With all of the propaganda being spread about how much farmers make, I'm not surprised how many people think farmers are rich. Sickened, but not surprised. Ask yourself this question: Would you work from 3:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night during the spring/summer/fall seasons for just enough wages to pay your bills and eat? That is what a family farmer in the United States does. And the winter that most people think farmers have off? That is spent repairing machinery that has worn and/or broken down during the farm season. Most farmers do more work in a month than most people will do in a lifetime. That is their choice, don't get me wrong, but the least we can do is thank them, and show them the respect they deserve, not sit around and complain about how much money you think they make.
Again, thank a farmer 3 times a day. Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. And when a slow-moving implement slows you down on the way to watch a movie, remind yourself that rather than honking and flipping him off, you should wave at him and smile on the way by, because if he weren't doing that, you would be out in your garden growing your food instead of watching that movie.
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:2)
Other than the "American Patriot" rhetoric at the end of your post (farmers, as a whole, aren't any better people or harder working than your computer programmers, doctors, taxi drivers, carpenters, or McD's counter person, so save the sob story) I agree wholeheartedly with your post. I'm not against farms (especially family ones) but I am against simplistic statments that we are supposed to take at face value.
What it really boils down to is this: congress wraps their farm-aid bills in the rhetoric of the family farm when you know and I know that the subsidies are going to a few huge corporate farms that have the money to hire lobbiests.
Add this to the fact that farming benefits from economies of scale (sorry to repeat myself). Your family farmer has a few options:
Re:Well, sure, it's cool, but... (Score:1)
Sorry, this is one subject I get carried away with. I didn't mean for it to sound like farmers are "better" than anyone else, but I would challenge most anyone who thinks their tech job is hard work to try farming for a year. I work at a large PC factory as an engineer, and have to remind myself on a constant basis that as hard as it may seem, it is still easier than moving sprinkler pipe and worrying about whether to buy crop insurance or fertilizer. :-) But it is a different work, not necessarily a harder work. More mental/stress vs. physical.
I feel I have a fairly good handle on the issue as I have been on the farming side of the fence. My "American Patriot" rhetoric comes from hearing too many people making comments such as "Lazy farmers sitting in an air-conditioned tractor cab all day..." when they have absolutely no clue beyond their window-sill garden they grow a couple of stalks of sweet corn in. I guess I forget a lot that there are people in this world who DO have a clue and research, and more importantly understand, what they are talking about.
Thank you for responding intelligently rather than flaming me for my little rant. If there were more people like you making comments, I don't think I would go off on rants like that as often.
Take it easy,
Jeremy
Ag... (Score:1)
Short for "Agriculture" (Score:1)
This isn't really news (Score:1)
at least 3 years old (Score:2)
Farming is tough business. Its a high tech world--if you don't take every advantage of technology you can, you'll loose the farm in short order to someone who will.
Re:This isn't really news (Score:1)
Re:This isn't really news (Score:2)
What I wonder is... (Score:4, Funny)
Hardly original (Score:5, Informative)
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 [deere.com] is already selling GPS-receiver equipped tractors (marketed as "StarFire receivers") that look about the size of a palm.
Re:Hardly original (Score:1, Informative)
Yup (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hardly original (Score:1)
Re:Hardly original (Score:1)
And Case-IH has been selling "precision farming" systems for years.
Re:Hardly original (Score:2)
Just because we live in the Heartland doesn't make us Technological Morons.
Satellite tractors from Deere--how it works (Score:2)
Excerpt:
"The farmers most likely to buy AutoTrac are those with large operations that require many field passes...
"Initially, [Deere] doesn't expect that will include a lot of row-crop applications. But it will include farmers who use wide tillage equipment or air seeders and farmers who have crops such as cotton that require a lot of field work.
"Like retrofit autosteer systems that have been on the market for a few years, Deere's AutoTrac relies on positioning information from satellites. Onboard computers process that information and use it to electronically steer...
"[How it works]...an operator makes an initial pass in a field as a computer records position information. The driver then turns the tractor at the headland, a computer screen helps him "acquire" a new parallel row and--at the push of a button--the computer takes control of the steering. The driver doesn't have to touch the steering wheel until he turns the tractor at the end of the new row....
"Deere's AutoTrac gets its 10-centimeter accuracy from the company's StarFire network, which uses multiple ground stations, computers and relay satellites to send positioning corrections to customers anywhere in North America."
Re:Hardly original (Score:1)
But the most important thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re:But the most important thing is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Things like the Adelaide University (Australia) project involving photos taken by remote controlled plane with cameras attached, make alot more sense.
Of course, another reason for the delay is because of the military checking of the photos to make sure they aren't of politically sensitive areas :P
sorry but (Score:2, Informative)
The lumber companies in Canada have been using GIS to better map their harvesting. They also have reduced the impact by being able to better utilize the mesh of old bush roads. Plus they get a better idea of the size and age of trees by looking at IR images.
GIS has also been used on farming with large farms - a farmer couldn't possibly monitor 1000's of hectres.
Check the Faculty of Environmental Studies [uwaterloo.ca] page at the University of Waterloo. [uwaterloo.ca] They have all kinds of cool uses for GIS - sea ice studies are pretty interesting.
Re:sorry but (Score:1)
Maybe it's not robots but (Score:1)
The man (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Bravo! (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [caff.org] , further reading [google.com]...
ummm... (Score:2)
Technical or social solutions? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bravo! (Score:1)
The problem is not that there are subsidies, the problem is that the only socially desirable objective incorporated into the subsidies is a steady, reliable, affordable stream of calories. It should be possible to construct a system of subsidies directed towards sustainable agriculture and good nutrition.
Sex-o-rama! (Score:1, Redundant)
Where DID his dog go? (Score:1)
Not new (Score:3, Informative)
Valmont is doing it smarter (Score:2, Informative)
Other neat GPS applications not mentioned (Score:4, Informative)
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
So farmers are becomming geeks? :) (Score:2, Insightful)
contradiction in goals and practice?
Perhaps not.
If a farmer can use his rescources to the greatest possible result, he might be able to become self reliant again. Today most farmers are supplimented [aamu.edu] by govt. assistance programs. If the GPS system and other technological advancements help without raising the cost unreasonably. And the land that was needed was reduced in size and produced the same or more produce, this could free the farmers from needing assistance.
Re:So farmers are becomming geeks? :) (Score:2)
Ironically, having the smaller farmers going out of business doesn't often affect the price. The problem isn't over-saturation of the market with product, but the farming mega-corporations buying out the smaller farms and driving the independants who are left out of business by undercutting their prices. The livestock marketplace is already a business area where the smaller independant farmer can't now turn a profit. Pretty much everybody left working in it is now just a 'farm manager' for one of the big conglomerates.
Sadly I think the days of the independant farmer are numbered.
This has been going on for a while (Score:2, Interesting)
Yep, Cool Eh? (Score:2)
Construction equipment has 2 or 3 of these systems so slope can be maintained.
The World Already Produces Enough Food (Score:1)
A better technological breakthrough can be found in Agroecology. The problem with global agriculture is not with production. Global organizations such as the IMF and the WTO impose policies that force marginalized farming communities to grow food for export while they face lower incomes and a lack of self sustainablility. It has been shown that several smaller acre farms will outproduce a single larger industrial farm (in terms of production per acre).
Here is an excerpt from Peter Rosset, Joseph Collins, and Frances Moore Lappé's Lessons from the Green Revolution:
More Food and Yet More Hunger?
Despite three decades of rapidly expanding global food supplies, there are still an estimated 786 million hungry people in the world in the 1990s. Where are these 786 million hungry people? Since the early 1980s, media representations of famines in Africa have awakened Westerners to hunger there, but Africa represents less than one-quarter of the hunger in the world today. We are made blind to the day-in-day-out hunger suffered by hundreds of millions more. For example, by the mid-1980s, newspaper headlines were applauding the Asian success stories-India and Indonesia, we were told, had become "self-sufficient in food" or even "food exporters." But it is in Asia, precisely where Green Revolution seeds have contributed to the greatest production success, that roughly two-thirds of the undernourished in the entire world live.
According to Business Week magazine, "even though Indian granaries are overflowing now," thanks to the success of the Green Revolution in raising wheat and rice yields, "5,000 children die each day of malnutrition. One-third of India's 900 million people are poverty-stricken." Since the poor can't afford to buy what is produced, "the government is left trying to store millions of tons of foods. Some is rotting, and there is concern that rotten grain will find its way to public markets." The article concludes that the Green Revolution may have reduced India's grain imports substantially, but did not have a similar impact on hunger.
Such analysis raises serious questions about the number of hungry people in the world in 1970 versus 1990, spanning the two decades of major Green Revolution advances. At first glance, it looks as though great progress was made, with food production up and hunger down. The total food available per person in the world rose by 11 percent over those two decades, while the estimated number of hungry people fell from 942 million to 786 million, a 16 percent drop. This was apparent progress, for which those behind the Green Revolution were understandably happy to take the credit.
But these figures merit a closer look. If you eliminate China from the analysis, the number of hungry people in the rest of the world actually increased by more than 11 percent, from 536 to 597 million. In South America, for example, while per capita food supplies rose almost 8 percent, the number of hungry people also went up, by 19 percent. In south Asia, there was 9 percent more food per person by 1990, but there were also 9 percent more hungry people. Nor was it increased population that made for more hungry people. The total food available per person actually increased. What made possible greater hunger was the failure to address unequal access to food and food-producing resources.
The remarkable difference in China, where the number of hungry dropped from 406 million to 189 million, almost begs the question: which has been more effective at reducing hunger-the Green Revolution or the Chinese Revolution, where broad-based changes in access to land paved the way for rising living standards?
Whether the Green Revolution or any other strategy to boost food production will alleviate hunger depends on the economic, political, and cultural rules that people make. These rules determine who benefits as a supplier of the increased production-whose land and crops prosper and for whose profit-and who benefits as a consumer of the increased production-who gets the food and at what price.
Re:The World Already Produces Enough Food (Score:2)
Hmmm. Can you cite? This would be an interesting figure....
And it sortof contradicts what you say below... if it's not the quantity that matters any more, why does it matter that several smaller farms can outproduce.
Is there a better distribution effect from several smaller farms?
And how DO you solve the problem of distribution?
Re:The World Already Produces Enough Food (Score:1)
Yes I have this study to cite:
This Paper [foodfirst.org]
Written by the great Agroecologist Peter Rosset...
I guess I failed to point out the social benefits of smaller farms... In a system of larger agricultural farms, farm owners tend to be very rich and farm workers are very poor: the rural economy is transformed from one of self-suficiency to one in which farmers are forced to make livings as wage earners. The point is, more small farms means more farmers producing for themselves rather than becoming dependent on the poor wages derived from farm work.
Also, smaller farms (with diverse crops) can be more easily tended to without expensive (economically and socially!) pesticides or chemical fertilizers. This helps eliminate the health dangers associated with agrochemicals (sometimes known as the "hidden economy" of industrial agriculture)...
I'm not sure what this problem of distribution is? In countries like Afghanistan, where only 11% of the land is arable, there is an understandable distribution problem. But what is more prevalent is a "policy" problem, where there is food available everywhere, and people don't have the money to buy food.
India currently has almost half of the world's hungry (defined as people who do not consume enough calories to sustain daily activity) at 250-300 million. However, India currently has about 60 to 70 tonnes of grain in storage, grown for export in accordance with IMF/World Bank Policy! This is insane. I suppose that I would say, to solve the distribution problem that India faces, would be to:
Re:The World Already Produces Enough Food (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with small farms here in America, is that the economics of food, combined with the overhead of our society, has made it very hard to keep a farm that is small enough to be run by a typical family.
Farms must get bigger in order to make enough to stay in business. We all bitch and moan if the price of milk goes up by a nickel a gallon. After the grocery, and the middle men, and the processors all take their cut, that leaves about 1 penny for the dairymen. In USA the price of milk to farmers right now is about what it was in 1981. You can bet everything else has gone up.
Even the small diversified subsistance farmer, who plans to grow a variety of crops and products that he can eat and use himself, still needs to make enough money to pay local taxes, school taxes, state taxes, federal taxes, sales taxes, a mortgage, and put his kids through 4 years a Cornell.
Kevin
Nothing new (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
She then used one of the satalite imaging places to take a good picture of it and made some caption like "The Happiest place on Earth, Kansas", had them printed and sells them as suveniers all over here in KS. That has net'd her quite a bit of cash
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
They have been using computers for longer then Ive been alive helping them with data
precision farming (Score:1)
The thing to keep in mind here is that this kind of technology only benefits farmers that are already efficiently using the things that aid agriculture (like fertilizer and pesticides). For instance... if you take a developing nation, precision farming doesnt help at all... the technology will spit out data that says "you need to use more of input A, input B, and input C, *everywhere*."
However, in North America, the benefits of this technology have unbelievable possibilities. The economic advantages of using your inputs in the most efficient way possible will produce the greatest yields farmers have ever seen.
Farmers typically are having trouble making profits (or so they say). profits are revenues minus costs, and the costs of agriculture are big. For large farms, these inputs are on such large economies of scale that the smallest advantages in using the inputs better will create very large increases in profits.
Not exactly new news (Score:1)
There are a ton of real good applications for GPS and GPS & GIS besides findout how far from the pin you are at 14.
1992-3 (Score:1)
Alamo Group in Seguin tx that was doing this.
not exactly bleeding edge stuff here.
Not new. (Score:1)
Re:Not new. (Score:1)
not just for farming (Score:1)
Good News. (Score:2)
Re:Good News. (Score:1)
Also, those 'inefficient' subsidies are responsible for the extremely low food prices in the US. You like milk at $2.30 a gallon, and $.75 for a loaf of bread? That's pretty cheap shit. Hamburger for $1/lb. Americans get the subsidies back every single day they purchase food. Another reason: we don't want to be dependent on imported food. Look at the disgusting situation with oil, and that problems that causes when even a 2% change in production comes through. Fucking turmoil. Imagine if that was wheat, or soy, or seed corn. We'd be fucked six ways from Sunday.
Wasn't this story submitted 9 years ago? (Score:1)
man invents wheel (Score:1)
This is 6+ year old technology (Score:1)
Re:This is 6+ year old technology (Score:2)
Agreed. And on top of that, the findings were that it didn't help. They found that the areas that did not yield well did not improve with application of more fertalizer. And there is only so much fertalizer you can put on a given spot. It basically came down that it was best to just use the same amount all over, as there was not even enough gain to evercome the added time and effort (read: money).
Re:This is 6+ year old technology (Score:2)
Umm, that's sort of the point. If the soil won't benefit from the fertilizer, there is no point in applying it because it will just run off into the water system.
Using this technology they can also vary the rate at which seeds are put in the ground. Since some soil will support more plants than others, this saves the cost of seed in the bad areas.
The debate when I was working with this back in 1994 was the cost/benefit analysis. At that time the equipment was incredibly expensive. A good GPS receiver was at least $5k, and a computer powerful enough to process the maps another $5-10k. Not to mention the equipment from Agchem and others to do variable rate application.
The costs of much of the technology has come down dramatically since then. That $10k computer back then is less powerful than what you can buy for $500 today, same with the GPS receivers and so on.
Re:This is 6+ year old technology (Score:2)
After going through all the analysis and work, they had a net loss over all, because at the end of it all, there was so little land where the research dictate a change that it was MUCH more cost effective to just ignore it all together.
This would probably be different if more of the land would dictate a change in behaivor.
I might also add that they farm A LOT of land, and that they are very good in terms of conservation, crop rotation, and so. They farm for profit, and they do that by properly sustaining their land.
And they're good people, too.
Re:This is 6+ year old technology (Score:1)
If you are lucky enough to find one of these that knows their stuff (i used to work with 3 of them) then you can do reduced chemical applications much better than any automated GPS anything. Why? Because a weed doesn't grow across the entire field. One corn field might have the insect you want to kill and one right next to it might not. Why spray your entire 640 acres of corn with a pesticide that costs $40+ an acre when it's the bloody 20 acre patch in near the trees thats getting hit.
What people don't realize is that it takes a LOT of REPEATED walking of the fields to find out what is out there and then react to that. A technological solution will not work here. Repeated visits on ATVs or by walking is the only way to go. If you want to reduce herbicide costs,and you use this approach, you can use 1/2 to 1/4th of the recommended dosage of a herbicide to kill of the weeds you want to kill. Agribusiness companies are going to tell you that because they want to:
This is no different than any other business. Mix up a batch of chemical that should kill everything out in the field in one pass and then use that same mix over multiple farms: REGARDLESS of what is in there at the time. So what if only 1 of the 3 or 4 chemicals were actually needed. So what if the all the fields didn't need it.
Can this technology help. Yes, IF it can identify weeds as they grow, tell you when they are at the most vulnerable to kill them (that's when they are small and they look very similar to each other. it takes experience to be able to distinguigh them from one another), be able to sample with cost effectiveness sample sizes that approach 0.1 acres (not achievable), and..... I can go on. You can use the GPS to define general areas of impact and then use that with general areas of application. But the way it's marketed and talked about its snake oil that cures all ills.
You get my drift I hope. A lot of farmers are ripped off each year and they don't even know it because they don't have a way of verifying the chemical application advice of chemical/elevator company "agronomists". BTW, farmers aren't the only ones that get hit by this. Ever hear of chemical lawn companies?
Re:This is 6+ year old technology (Score:2)
We only worked with Independent Ag consultants, and what you say is correct. There was a lot of manual labor involved collecting GPS positioned data... soil samples, insect and weed locations, etc. Then over the winter all of this data would be collected together and plotted into plans for the next season. It was a feedback loop of sorts.
But I agree, that cost/benefit analysis is a big part of it. At the time I was in this, there was a suspicion that the EPA was going to get involved and start changing the rules on pesticide application, etc... which would mean you pretty much had to go to variable rate application in order to comply.
agri-tech employers? (Score:1)
old news (Score:1, Informative)
Old News (Score:1)
Precision Farmer Actions (Score:1, Offtopic)
"I'm going steady, and I French kiss."
"Yeah, well, everybody does that."
"Well, Daddy says I'm the best at it."
What Farmers Think (Score:1)
Been doing this for at least three years (Score:2, Informative)
New? Hardly (Score:1)
John Deere (Score:1)
John Deere has been doing this for awhile. Crap, they showed them at the local farm show two or more years ago. I'm sure the maps are much better, but the technology hasn't changed much. It still takes a good farmer to use it, which is getting rare these days in mass production.
Yee ha.
I'll add to the chorus of "This isn't New" .... (Score:1)
Flying in a GPS equiped crop duster (Score:1)
You may not think it is hard to know when you are over the edge of a field but this guy was flying low and fast with seriously sharp turns at each end. Down was not often down. I think we trimmed the tree tops with the wingtip into the bargian.
OF course this was not varying the dose over area by GPS but with big fields the advantages in cost saving make these cool toys well worth it to the farmer, and there is some environmetal advantage for free (As much as can be when tending a monoculture)
In case you get lost in a corn field (Score:1, Offtopic)
Farmer's Son: It's ok pa, We've got the GPS, it'll tell us where we are
Farmer: Good thinkin', junior
Farmer's Son: OK, y'all wait on, nearly got a signal.. OK, I got it!
Farmer: So, where are we?
Farmer's Son: We are at 123.45'56"E, 43.45'23"N
Farmer: So.....
Farmer's Son: Pa! Pa! I know where we are now!
Farmer: Where, son, where? Tell your old man
Farmer's Son: Well, Sir, Well, Pa, Well, we're in a corn field.
Well, nobody else made any farmer jokes!
Radar advances (Score:1)
The fact that radar is all-weather, night and day also means that it can be used in countries such as the UK, where the presence of clouds would be a major hassle
Some links:
NA Software [nasoftware.co.uk] (and I don't work for them)
Let me know . . . (Score:2)
a) crop dusting
b) organic farming
(And no, the two are not mutually exclusive!!)
This application *IS* new, but it won't work. (Score:1)
During a post-doc at Michigan State, I helped develop a grant proposal to develop a precision-ag system back in 1998. The biggest sticking point in the whole project was the fact that the efficacy of fertilizers is strongly influenced by the soil characteristics: drainage, % organic matter, ratios of sand/silt/clay, etc. Maybe in Kansas the soil is completely uniform on a meter-scale, but in most areas, it varies significantly. A given section of a corn field may be underproducing, not becasue it coudl use more fertilizer, but because it's sitting on top of a two-meter clay lens that won't allow it to use the fertilizer you've been giving it.
To make meter-scale chemical application worth the extra effort (and information management is a big effort/cost), you have to have soil profiling done on a meter-scale, and that is a hell of a lot of soil samples that have to be processed. Unlike yield mapping, you can't just turn on the laptop in the cab of the tractor and start rolling.... in a precision soil-mapping project, that's thousands of little bags of soil to be sent back to the lab for chemical and physical analysis, in addition to any nematode or insect tests.
To top it off, the soil profile of a given field changes with time, so the hugely expensive detailed soil map that you made three years ago? Gotta go do it again.
I wish them luck.
This is like George Bush Sr. showing surprise upon (Score:1)
Come on guys this is old, old news.
Next thing you'll be talking about how ships
are using GPS for navigating the sees!
WOW!
This is my Job (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Seen this before... (Score:1)
sad (Score:1)
I would not use them. (Score:1)
1) This sounds VERY expensive, and in the end it doesn't accomplish any more then what a competent farmer can do.
2) In a decade where we are beginning to learn that "Producing more" doesn't mean winning, most farmers are REDUCING their amount of acres to grow the most unusual crops a person has ever seen. Pumpkins, flowers (for seeds for urban gardeners), etc. What use would I have for one of these when I have a field consisting of 15 acres of a crop that keeps my farm going?
Replace furrow irrigation. (Score:1)
But, there is a more important application. If a farmer is able to always drive in the same spot, he can do more exotic things to the other parts of the field without risk of damaging them. One of the possibilities (which is already being tested by the Malheur Experiment Station [cropinfo.net]) is permanent buried drip irrigation systems. This modifies the existing drip irrigation systems by buring the tape about 11 inches below the soil and leaving it in for multiple seasons. This significantly decreases the cost of using drip irrigation. The drip irrigation is a small buried tape which emits water in the root zone of the plants. It allows the minimum ammount of water to be applied to irrigate a crop. This has many invironmental benefits. Because no excess water is applied to the field, there is no runoff, which can contain agricultural chemicals. There is also no excess water, so a process called leaching does not take place. In this process excess water seeps down through the soil, carrying with it ag chemicals, and fertilizer, both naturaly occuring and artificial. When the nitrogen is not leached out of the soil, less fertilizer must be applied to the field to produce similar yields.
High precission farm GPS will help to minimize damage to fields from tractor traffic, enable the use of permantent drip irrigation systems, and possibly technologies which have not yet been concieved. These technologies are of significant interest because they will allow more economic and environmentaly friendly farming practices in the future.
three waves of technology (Score:2)
Re:I think I have a better idea (Score:1)
"Organic farming" isn't the panacaea you think it is. True organic farming requires extreme biohazardous materials. Ever seen what comes out of a cow's rear end? Not the mass, I mean the little critters living in it. Throw that on a field, and watch the farmer grow lots of things that aren't fit for animal consumption, let alone human consumption. When the farmer has to work outside his/her tractor, EPA and OSHA regulations require a full biohazard suit, because the bacteria level is so high. Any injury will instantly go septic.
Organic farming isn't that dangerous? Think again. When you see that term on packaging, the packers are using an unregulated term that's full of propeganda.
Though this doesn't really deserve a reply (Score:1)
I might point out that you are entirely wrong. If you've ever actually LOOKED at a commercial product that was grown organically, on it will be a phrase "grown and processed in accordance with the California Organic Foods act of 1990" or similar for whatever state your in. yep, Sounds pretty hazardous and unregulated to me. Also having worked on an organic farm, wallowing knee-deep in your so-called biohazardous materials with nothing more that a pair of shoes (sometimes not even that) between me and that horrible "organic filth" we call dirt, I can only hope that the people reading your post are intelligent enough to know your full of shit, most likely a crop duster in real life....
so basically all I'm trying to say is, fuck you. Anyone can moderate with one account and then reply as an AC, so don't think you're too clever, little child.
Re:old (Score:1)
Anyways, using GPS tech. on tractors is nothing new in that area. I believe the soil service coops have been doing it for years. I also remember there being a class in high school that taught use of GPS technology on the farm, I think our school had received a grant for it.....
Re:Drugs (Score:1)
are you impressed yet?