Precision Pays

Dr. Simon Blackmore says he has his sights set on the future of agriculture. Not many could doubt that after considering the extensive breadth of research and development the world-renowned agriculturist continually applies to his work in precision farming.

Simon was a leading speaker at the 9th International Conference on Precision Agriculture, sharing his expertise on two main fronts: FutureFarm and Unibots.

FutureFarm is a project that’s meant to conceptualize and then fully manifest the European Union’s ideas on the Farm of Tomorrow. As manager of FutureFarm, Simon says precision agriculture techniques are critical to the development of agriculture. He says FutureFarm is researching and conducting real-world tests of how precision agriculture is reshaping farming practices around the world. It’s a project, he says, that considers and studies integration of information systems, real-time management support, implications of biofuels, socio-economic impacts, the development of robotics and more.

Unibots is the brainchild of Simon himself. Simon is the founder and managing director of Unibots Ltd, a company that commercializes academic research in mobile outdoor robots. Robots, not men, make up most of the labor force in Simon’s vision of the future of agriculture. There are many factors, Simon says, that support the need for such a robotic future. He points out that current technology means farming machinery such as combines, sprayers and plows get bigger to increase output. But, Simon says that trend cannot continue. There will be a point where size gets to big to handle.

Instead, Simon says the ag industry needs to focus on developing more intelligent machines that are sensitive to plant needs. He says replacing large manned tractors with multiple, small intelligent machines would offer numerous advantages. The use of robots, he says, can provide opportunities to conduct operations that are not currently possible or that currently cost too much time and money. Robots can be designed to operate on low energy. They can target inputs intelligently. He says they are also cost effective through incremental investment and integrated fleet management - such as implementing longer working hours, increased working rates and intelligent response to weather. For example, he says robots can work through the night. Or, he adds, they can be programmed to stop working during rainfall or high wind, simply waiting to resume work on-site once weather conditions become optimal again.

Simon isn’t dreaming all this up. His company has already developed robots that can intelligently work through the field, such as a cycloid weed hoe with retracting legs to avoid crop damage, notched disc weeding machines, autonomous tractors, remote controlled tractors, autonomous crop scouting with weed recognizing microsprayers and more.

The agriculturist says he is convinced that equipment will continue to become “smarter.” The industry, in his opinion, will continue improving the automatic control of well-defined tasks and automated data gathering. This, he says, will lead to improved data processing into real information. Simon says the possibility for fully autonomous vehicles with sensible behavior is entirely real and the opportunity for development is now. It’s time, he says, to begin designing and building a new, small and smart mechanization system.

You can listen to Simon give an overview of his extensive work here. I have also spoken with Simon on each topic in two separate interviews that will be posted in the near future.

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There is no one idea or definition of precision agriculture if you ask Dr. Rajiv Khosla. Raj chaired the 9th annual International Conference on Precision Agriculture earlier this month in Denver, CO. I attended the conference and, while there, I managed to gather more information on precision than I know what to do with… and there was still an immeasurable amount of information I didn’t even get to touch. Everything I did manage to gather though will be parceled out and posted here, on PrecisionPays.com. So, in the coming weeks, look forward to a wealth of ideas on precision ag science, innovations and applications from experts around the globe.

The first you will hear from is Raj. Raj opened the conference, challenging presenters and attendees alike to think about what, exactly, is precision agriculture. Raj challenged listeners to consider whether precision techniques are only related to technology, innovation, developed countries and large acreages or if they can also include the intercultivation techniques of a single farmer with just a half acre field, who walks through every row using a single wheel and single hoe, his optical sensors amounting an instrument no more complex than his own two eyes.

Raj estimated there were between 450 and 500 participants in this year’s conference, with 250 oral and poster presentations, 34 concurrent sessions on a plethora of precision topics and representatives from 43 distinct countries.

“I think that’s really amazing and very impressive to be able to attract so many people from diverse backgrounds with unique and rich experiences related to precision agriculture,” Raj said.

The precision expert and educator suggests that precision agriculture consists of ideas, technologies and solutions that depend upon where in the globe they’re practiced. He says precision “technology” can, in fact, be quite different from one country to another.

Simply put, precision ag is “the right input at the right time in the right place in the right manner.”

Raj urged listeners to think of precision ag as “something that’s not relative to one place but something that has a place everywhere on this planet.”

“What could be a better time than now to take advantage of precision agricultural technologies when the world is witnessing the largest rise in food prices, energy prices, input prices and the demand and supply of food to the hungry mouth,” Raj said. “Something to think about. I think it is an opportune time for us to take advantage of precision agriculture here and everywhere else.”

You can listen to Raj’s remarks here:

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Setting standards for precision ag equipment and software seems to be getting some momentum from the ASABE according to Paul Schrimpf, PrecisionAg Institute in his latest post.

Well, a release just came across my inbox from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, a standards developing organization for food, agricultural, and biological systems. One of the many new standardization projects now in play, according to the release, is the development of “a standard for geospatial mapping of crop yield, moisture content, and quality data, including defined data formats and uniform map presentation methods.”

Here’s an excerpt from that release:

The purpose of this standard is to improve the processing and utilization of data files containing geospatial yield, moisture content (MC), and quality data with respect to information content, units, and interoperability between different software products and measurement systems. The standard will cover data acquisition, data processing, and data representation in map form and will provide a defined format for data collected with sensors that measure yield, MC, quality, and geographic position on various crop harvesting machines.

The ASABE Annual International Meeting will take place in late June.