According to the World Bank's article on Climate-Smart Agriculture, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, requiring a 70% increase in food production to meet demand. Feeding people in decades to come will require innovation to grow more food on less land in more sustainable ways. Climate change will also exacerbate already tight resource constraints that humanity faces today, making every factor affecting crop growth more critical and urgent than ever before.
In this blog, we will explore how precision agriculture technology can be applied to different aspects of crop growth and protection, including environment monitoring and control, crop growth regulation, pest and disease control, and crop lifecycle management throughout the entire agricultural process.
Environment Monitoring and Control
Just as humans and animals need proper living conditions to thrive, plants also require a nurturing environment to produce a bountiful harvest. The well-being of crops is deeply intertwined with their surroundings, a very starting point for precision agriculture to step in. Modern technologies such as drones have numerous burgeoning scopes in agriculture to solve various issues for better production of agro-products.
With the help of IoT and remote sensing technologies, modern farmers can obtain real-time data on factors like soil moisture, temperature, humidity, sunlight, PH levels—all critical factors about vegetation dynamics. This information can then be used to accurately adjust environmental conditions that affect crop growth and yield. One such example is smart spray system that can turn the application on/off based on soil moisture levels to avoid overspraying and underspraying, providing crops with the exact amount they need.
To go further, when combined with ISOBUS, the spray system can seamlessly connect with various pieces of farm machinery, whether they're working on the same or separate plots. This allows multiple equipment to share data in real time, facilitating efficient collaboration and optimizing agricultural operations across the land.
Crop Growth Regulation
There are several ways to regulate crop growth. One common method is through the use of sensors and other monitoring equipment that provide real-time data on how crops grow at all stages from sprouting, flowering, fruiting to ripening. By monitoring these metrics over the course of a growing season, farmers can gain valuable insights into the health and development of their crops, and make timely adjustments to optimize crop cultivation and yield.
Another way to regulate crop growth is made possible with algorithms and machine learning models. Taking corn planting as an example, with drones and GPS receivers to collect data about plant height, seedling potential, chlorophyll content, and other indicators, farmers can use these models to analyze and process large amounts of collected data for timely assessment and predictions about crop growth trends. In this way, farmers can take actions such as fertilization to improve the quality and yield of maize.
Pest and Disease Control
Insect pests and diseases harm crop growth and inflict enormous losses to the potential agricultural production. Anecdotal evidences also indicate a rise in the losses, despite the increasing use of chemical pesticides. Instead of relying on experience for the application of herbicides and pesticides, precision agriculture technology ushers in a scientific approach to control pests, diseases, and weeds in farmland by making accurate diagnoses and differentiating the application amount in each plot.Nowadays, precision spraying is a mature technique that can be utilized to release pesticides into the areas where diseases, pests, and weeds occur, helping farmers reduce pesticide usage and improve crop protection. Plus, the application of visual recognition technology can enable rapid detection of the severity of diseases and pests, allowing farmers to accurately spray through smart spraying equipment.
Crop Lifecycle Management
Crop lifecycle management is the practice of managing data for crops from planting to harvest. At first glance, this approach may appear sophisticated and overwhelming to farmers, despite the fact that they always feel it is necessary and even beneficial to document all steps throughout the complete agricultural process.With advancements in technology, this procedure can be easily accomplished by using data analytics and cloud platforms, which allow farmers to monitor crop lifecycles and access historical data for future reference. They do not have to worry about data loss as much as they would if they kept paper records.
Precision agriculture technology, once a futuristic dream, has now become an indispensable ally to modern farmers, taking them on a journey toward producing healthier and more productive crops while maintaining sustainable and profitable farming practices. By blending the age-old art of farming with modern science, precision agriculture is poised to become even more integral in solving complex food issues worldwide.