Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the U.S. total, followed by Georgia and California. Upland cotton is by far the pre-
dominant type of cotton grown in the United States. Some American Pima cotton,
which has longer and finer fibers, is grown in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and
Texas. About 90% of the Pima is produced in California (USDA, 2011b).
Producing high-yielding and high-quality cotton requires careful management
in every production stage, including cultivar selection, field-management practices,
harvesting, storage, and ginning. Mechanization and automation play a very impor-
tant role. The top three mechanical inventions affecting cotton production are the
cotton gin, the cotton harvester, and the cotton module builder. The cotton gin sepa-
rates the fiber from the seed, which is the most essential processing step in marketing
and distribution of harvested cotton. The cotton harvester substantially reduces the
manpower required to pick cotton. The module builder compresses harvested seed
cotton into large, rectangular, roughly 8.5-Mg blocks for field storage and efficient
transport to the gin. These machines have dramatically enhanced cotton productivity
and improved cotton fiber quality around the world.
Precision-agriculture technologies for cotton have been used to improve the effi-
ciency of cotton production in recent years. Development and utilization of mecha-
nization, sensing, and control technologies in cotton production and processing will
be discussed in this chapter.
6.2 PRECISION AGRICULTURE TECHNOLOGY IN COTTON
Precision agriculture (PA) uses detailed information within an agricultural field to
optimize production inputs on a spatially variable basis, rather than to apply uniform
applications across the entire field. It allows producers to apply appropriate amounts
of production inputs such as fertilizers and herbicides on each location within a field.
This can not only maximize farm profit, but also minimize environmental impact.
To be successful, PA requires data acquisition, data interpretation, and variable-rate
application (VRA). Data acquisition involves collecting field input and output data,
and spatial information from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. The input
data include plant stresses and soil properties such as elevation, texture, and fertil-
ity. The output data primarily are crop yield and quality. Data interpretation for PA
involves understanding the data collected and relating the input data to the outputs
site—specifically so as to economically and environmentally optimize input prescrip-
tions. VRA involves the capacity to apply various inputs, such as fertilizers, water, and
herbicides, at varying rates appropriate for each location, based on the prescriptions
developed from the data collected and the input-output relationships observed.
PA technologies have been gradually adopted in cotton production. A survey con-
ducted in 2009 among 1692 cotton producers from 12 U.S. states showed that 63%
of the producers had adopted precision farming in some form, such as using infor-
mation gathering technology, variable-rate management, or GPS guidance. From
2004 to 2008, use of yield monitoring with GPS and grid and zone soil sampling
showed the largest increases among information gathering technology adopters, and
VRA of fertilizer and lime had the largest increase in adoption among those mak-
ing variable-rate management decisions (Mooney et al., 2010). Around the world,
especially in the United States and Europe, many companies provide PA technology
