Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
a practical way of doing it by using interaction plots to show such conditional depen-
dences applied to the data.
3.5
PRECISION FARMING SERVICES
3.5.1 O
VERVIEW
As agricultural infotronic systems technology was developed mainly for supporting
precision and automated farming, its applications are also focused on supporting pre-
cise or automated crop production. Precision and automated farming distinguishes
itself from conventional farming by the level of management: instead of managing a
whole field as one unit, it manages the field by several customized small zones based
on the actual needs for achieving profitable and sustainable production in those
regions. Therefore, precision farming management relies heavily on the capability of
extracting optimal actionable data—in other words, providing operational instruc-
tions, from massive relevant collectable data. Performing this work requires multiple
special skills, and many farmers rely on professionals to provide site-specific man-
agement planning services. AIS is designed to remove this obstacle for farmers by
including a vital element of precision farming services in the loop to help the farmer
obtain easier access to professional precision farming service providers.
3.5.2 E
XAMPLES
OF
P
RODUCTS
AND
S
ERVICES
Precision farming services have been available to farmers from off-farm providers
for many years, with many of them providing soil mapping and aerial photography
services in early years. As precision farming technology progresses, more services,
such as soil/crop sensing and variable rate application planning, have become com-
mercially available to farmers. Almost all major agricultural equipment manufac-
turers are providing some precision farming products to farmers to practice their
site-specific management activities. For example, Deere & Company offers prod-
ucts, such as GreenStar™, AutoTrac™ and Harvest Doc™, to provide farmers the
necessary means in collecting site-specific data on their production. To provide
georeferenced data processing tools, the company also offers a few products and
services, such as Ag Management Solutions, iGrade™, Swath Control Pro™, and
Harvest Monitor™, to cover the data management needs for the entire production
cycle from field preparation to harvesting (Deere & Company, 2011b). Almost all
other major agricultural equipment manufacturers are offering similar products and
services to their customers.
There are also a few commercial georeference data service providers, providing
data analysis service or even data products, for farmers to help them achieve optimal
management of crop production. For example, Precision Ag Consulting, a regional
agricultural consulting company that specializes in vineyard management, offers
viticulture production consulting services, such as soil fertility, irrigation manage-
ment, and vineyard pest control services, to grape growers on the California Central
Coast and San Joaquin Valley (Precision Ag Consulting, 2011). This company is
definitely not the only company providing this type of service. There are many local,
