Modeling for Decision Support in Precision Agriculture

From BioMASS Laboratory Wiki

Abstract from the ASABE Annual International Meeting 2009 in Reno, NV

For 10 years the technology of precision agriculture has promised huge benefits, but has largely fallen short on delivery. Ultimately, not only do farmers wish to increase their profits, they wish to do it more reliably. The primary failure for the early adopters of precision agriculture technologies seeking those two features is in the baseline approach of using the yield map to make decisions. Much like the stock market, past performance is not a strong indicator of future returns. To address this deficiency we consider providing a solution involving a control system capable of making better decisions than those supported by just yield maps. To do so, we examine here the observations of a community of investigators involved in the various aspects of delivering a successful precision agriculture system. We seek to understand how they have succeeded and what aspects can be taken advantage of to build an agronomic decision support and control system. The component parts have been identified for such a system. These include the leading models that might be capable of providing model based control. It will be necessary to consider how to collect the necessary data for feeding a model. Later, once a decision has been made, the technology required to implement variable rate decisions is considered. With the precision agriculture approach, farmers will be presented with massive amounts of information. Making sense of the volume of information will be critical. We also consider approaches to providing decision support that is sensitive to the farmers disposition. In summary, to validate such decision support and control systems, many years of data will be necessary to consider the long-term profit potential. It has been shown that economically, any single year of returns may not justify the investment. The constraints are even tighter in commodity crop markets where year to year margins are already slim. However, environmental impacts are much greater. If it can be shown that these environmental impacts can rapidly turn around and benefit the farmer, whether economically or otherwise, the argument for precision agriculture technology may become quite simple.