Precision agriculture technology for crop farming uses modern technologies like satellite imagery or field mapping to improve crop quality and profitability. Also, it helps to optimize the use of traditional resources. Thus, it helps with the development of sustainable agriculture, solving both economic and ecological problems that are becoming more acute. The technologies used in such a system include drones, GPS, and satellite images. Depending on this data, farmers get all the information on key issues like crop status, environmental changes, weather forecasts, and more.
The primary difference between traditional farming and precision agriculture technology for crop farming is the ability to manage fields not as a single block but by dividing them into separate areas. Zoning allows diversifying the management decisions for individual field parts of the field, a better adjustment in fertilizer amount, optimizing the technique movement and using the fuel more frugally.
Precision Agriculture Technology for Crop Farming and Its Application Fields
1. VRT in Precision Agriculture
Variable Rate Technology allows growers to apply fertilizer, chemicals, seeds, and other elements to different parts of a field based on their requirements. Also, the farmers can test the soil for nutrients like nitrogen, and they can feed only those areas that lack different nutrients. With variable rate application, precision agriculture needs specific software and a differential global positioning system (DGPS).
There are different VRT types. The map-sensor-based VRT will examine the soil with sensors in real time. It can help in determining the nitrogen deficiency. Precision agriculture technology for crop farming empowers crop monitoring, and it offers the ability to zone any field based on vegetation indices.
The zoned field map is integrated with VRT to tailor the amount of water, fertilizer, chemicals, and seeds on different parts of the field. Therefore, all thanks to the VRT, farmers can care about the plants in a much more effective way. They can use as many additional resources as needed, save their money, and impact the environment because there is no fertilizer run-off.
2. Yield Monitoring and Mapping in Precision Agriculture
While creating a field map, it is crucial to consider the environment’s condition to get objective data. This includes landscape, weather, and earth. Thus, satellite remote sensing and GPS are used for this. The maps display all the field nuances and harvest state. Depending on such a precision agriculture yield map, precision agriculture technology for crop farming helps the growers to effectively monitor the readiness of the crops for harvest through the help of vegetation indices. Historical weather and field data allow farmers to predict crop yields. At the same time, the data must be accurate. With precision farming, you can get custom solutions for yield prediction.
3. Micro Irrigation
The micro irrigation system helps the growers to plan the field irrigation effectively by identifying the areas with low or high soil moisture. Precision agriculture irrigation makes things possible to carry out variable rate irrigation to vary the water supply volume for the different field parts. This level of control helps to improve irrigation efficiency and results in significant water savings. Farmers can quickly identify the specific areas where the field needs additional watering, the areas of flooding, or the areas with excessive moisture.
4. Site-Specific Crop Management (SSCM)
This is an agricultural management concept depending on monitoring, reacting, and counting to crop variability between the fields or within on specific area. Most of the existing SSCM methods use accurate global positioning combined with site-specific measurements for quantifying the spatial changing field conditions.