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Precision Farming: Dreams and Realities for Indian Agriculture The Basic Components of Precision Farming Precision farming basically depends on measurement and understanding of variability, the main components of precision farming system must address the variability. Precision farming technology enabled, information based and decision focused, the components include, (the enabling technologies) Remote Sensing (RS), Geographical Information System (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), Soil Testing, Yield Monitors and Variable Rate Technology. Precision farming requires the requisition, management, analysis and output of large amount of spatial and temporal data. Mobile computing systems were needed to function on the go in farming operations because desktop systems in the farm office were not sufficient. Because precision farming is concerned with spatial and temporal variability and it is information based and decision focused. It is the spatial analysis capabilities of GIS that enable precision agriculture. GPS, DGPS has greatly enabled precision farming and of great importance to precision farming, particularly for guidance and digital evaluation modeling position accuracies at the centimeter level are possible in DGPS receivers. Accurate guidance and navigation systems will allow for farming operations at height and under unfavorable weather conditions even. In India, we have all these technologies available and they can be implemented through agricultural training centers by giving training to agriculture officers in these technologies. Basic Steps in Precision Farming The basic steps in precision farming are,
i). Assessing variability Assessing variability is the critical first step in precision farming. Since it is clear that one cannot manage what one does not know. Factors and the processes that regulate or control the crop performance in terms of yield vary in space and time. Quantifying the variability of these factors and processes and determining when and where different combinations are responsible for the spatial and temporal variation in crop yield is the challenge for precision agriculture. Techniques for assessing spatial variability are readily available and have been applied extensively in precision agriculture. The major part of precision agriculture lies in assessing to spatial variability. Techniques for assessing temporal variability also exist but the simultaneous reporting a spatial and temporal variation is rare. We need both the spatial and temporal statistics. We can observe the variability in yield of a crop in space but we cannot predict the reasons for the variability. It needs the observations at crop growth and development over the growing season, which is nothing but the temporal variation. Hence, we need both the space and time statistics to apply the precision farming techniques. But this is not common to all the variability/factor that dictate crop yield. Some variables are more produced in space rather with time, making them more conducive to current forms of precision management. ii). Managing variability Once variation is adequately assessed, farmers must match agronomic inputs to known conditions employing management recommendations. Those are site specific and use accurate applications control equipment. We can use the technology most effectively. In site-specific variability management. We can use GPS instrument, so that the site specificity is pronounced and management will be easy and economical. While taking the soil/plant samples, we have to note the sample site coordinates and further we can use the same for management. This results in effective use of inputs and avoids any wastage and this is what we are looking for. The potential for improved precision in soil fertility management combined with increased precision in application control make precise soil fertility management as attractive, but largely unproven alternative to uniform field management. For successful implementation, the concept of precision soil fertility management requires that within-field variability exists and is accurately identified and reliably interpreted, that variability influences crop yield, crop quality and for the environment. There fore inputs can be applied accurately. The higher the spatial dependence of a manageable soil property, the higher the potential for precision management and the greater its potential value. The degree of difficulty, however, increases as the temporal component of spatial variability increases. Applying this hypothesis to soil fertility would support that Phosphorus and Potassium fertility are very conducive to precision management because temporal variability is low. For N, the temporal component of variability can be larger than its spatial component, making precision N management much more difficult in some cases. iii). Evaluation There are three important issues regarding precision agriculture evaluation.
The term technology transfer could imply that precision agriculture occurs when individuals or firms simply acquire and use the enabling technologies. While precision agriculture does involve the application of enabling technologies and agronomic principles to manage spatial and temporal variability, the key term is manage. Much of the attention in what is called technology transfer has focused on how to communicate with the farmer. These issues associated with the managerial capability of the operator, the spatial distribution of infrastructure and the compatibility of technology to individual farms will change radically as precision agriculture continues to develop (Pierce and Peter, 1999). Technology Transition Precision agriculture is dependent on the existence of variability in either or both product quantity and quality. If this variability does not exist then a uniform management system is both the cheapest and most effective management strategy and precision farming is redundant. Thus, in precision farming, “Variability of production and quality equals opportunity”. Having said this, the nature of the variation is also important in determining the potential for PA in a system. For example the magnitude of the variability may be too small to be economically feasible to manage. Alternatively the variability may be highly randomized across the production system making it impossible to manage with current technology. Finally the variability may due to a constraint that is not manageable. Thus the implementation of precision farming is limited by the ability of current variable rate technology (VRT- machinery/technology that allows for differential management of a production system) to cope with the highly variable sites and the economic inability to produce returns from sites with low variability using precision farming (VRT). Due to these constraints PA is at present operating on a zonal rather than a completely site-specific basis. As VRT improves and the capital cost of entering PA decreases, the minimum size of management zone needed to effectively implement PA will decrease till eventually a truly site-specific management regime is possible. Until this occurs there is need to be able to quantify both the variability of a production system and the size of the minimum manageable zone (MMZ). If the variability in the production system dictates management zones smaller than the MMZ than PA is not relevant to the system. At the present time (but may be in future). It will be interesting to see how the concept of the management zone develops and to see how it compares with the concept of terroir.
Present Scenario Though precision farming is very much talked about in developed countries, it is still at a very nascent stage in developing countries, including India. Space Application center, ISRO, in collaboration with Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla, has initiated a study on exploring the role remote sensing for precision farming. The study on precision agriculture has already been initiated in India, in many research institutes. Space Application Center (ISRO), Ahmedabad has started experiment in the Central Potato Research Station farm at Jalahandhar, Punjab to study the role of remote sensing in mapping the variability with respect to space and time. M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, in collaboration with NABARD, has adopted a village in Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu for variable rate input application. Indian Agricultural Research Institute has drawn up a plan to do precision farming experiments in the institutes’ farm. Project Directorate for Cropping Systems Research (PDCSR), Modipuram and Meerut (UP) in collaboration with Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering (CIAE), Bhopal also initiated variable rate input application in different cropping systems. In coming few years precision farming may help the Indian farmers to harvest the fruits of frontier technologies without compromising the quality of land. Prospects Precision farming, though in many cases a proven technology is still mostly restricted to developed (American and European) countries. Except for a few (Wang, 2001), there is not much literature to show the scope of its implementation in India. We feel that, one of the major problems is the small field size. In India more than 57.8 per cent of operational holdings have size less than 1 ha. However, in the major agricultural states of Punjab, Rajastan, Haryana and Gujarat there are more than 20 per cent of agricultural lands have operational holding size of more than 4 ha. These are individual field sizes. However, when we consider contiguous field with same crop (mostly under similar management practices) the field (rather simulated field) sizes are large. Using aerial data, has found that in Patiala district of Punjab, more than 50 per cent of contiguous field sizes are larger than 15 ha. These contiguous fields can be considered a single field for the purpose of implementation of precision farming. There is a scope of implementing precision farming for major food-grain crops such as rice, wheat, especially in the states of Punjab and Haryana. However many horticultural crops in India, which are high profit making crops, offer wide scope for precision farming.  Precision Farming at a Glance- Steps Involved |
