Communication satellites are for broadcasting and for weather predictions. Right? After satellite-enabled tele-medicine brought sophisticated diagnosis and cure to remote corners of the world, f satellite technology is already making inroads into farming enabling to boost agricultural output and productivity world wide.

Precision agriculture is now getting acceptance in Australia, South Africa and looking forward to make leaps in North, South America, Europe and other regions, according to Topcon Precision Agriculture which acquired KEE, known in the precision agriculture for the past 25 years.

In terms of take up of this technology among farmers in developed economies, Australia and South Africa are global leaders in the marketplace, but their United States counterparts are quickly closing the gap.

The large South American economies such as Argentina and Brazil, as well as Europe are readily accepting the new precision agriculture technologies, Topcon said.

While KEE was providing access to single-network GPS signals, Topcon said today’s most sophisticated precision agriculture systems integrate GNSS technology’s less than two-centimeter accurate positioning capability with a vast array of guidance systems, sensing devices, metering systems, and weather stations to provide farmers with unprecedented control over their land preparation, seeding, application and watering, and harvesting.

In 2006, KEE was purchased by Topcon Positioning Systems, to form Topcon Precision Agriculture. This new division of Topcon combined KEE’s display and variable rate control technology with Topcon’s highly accurate GNSS-based guidance and general machine control technology.

History of Precision Agriculture
Precision agriculture had its beginnings back in the 1970s, when contractors began using laser controlled graders and scrapers in broad-acre applications, such as cotton and wheat farming, where vast, flat areas had to be accurately leveled and irrigated. A major step forward occurred just 15 years ago, when in 1995 the United States’ GPS constellation NAVSTAR was made available for non-military use for the first time.

Initial accuracies were only within tens of meters, but fairly quickly the technology developed until today farmer operators can achieve accuracies to within two centimeters.

The construction industry was one of the first to see the benefits of this technology in large civil construction projects, and much of the early research and development went into this industry, with its high-volume demand. However, it wasn’t long before this technology began to be offered to the farming sector.

Early systems were based around on-screen mapping, in conjunction with a light-bar visual guidance system, which visually showed an operator where to spray, till, or plant.

The technology we have progressed to today allows operators, controlling a wide range of farming machines and implements and with little or no user intervention, to achieve an accuracy of within two centimeters – something which is actually unique to precision agriculture systems developed by Topcon.

A key element in achieving these sorts of accuracies – combined with some very sophisticated software and engineering – is the use of two or more satellite constellations: the US GPS system, and the Russian GLONASS system. When satellite signals from multiple constellations are used, it’s referred to as GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System).

With GPS and GLONASS, users have access to more than 40 satellites – and Topcon was the world’s first manufacturer to be able to access both the GPS and GLONASS signals for precision positioning in the surveying and construction fields, a press release said.Additional satellites are expected to come online in the next several years as two other systems – Europe’s Galileo and China’s Compass – become operational.

Receivers such as Topcon’s G3 receiver system have been designed specifically to access all available satellite signals, now and in the future. Why is this important? It’s simple: the more satellites a GNSS receiver can access, the greater the accuracy and ability to operate in hilly or mountainous terrain or close to tree lines.

The impetus for much of this technology has come from a perhaps surprising source: two large Southern Hemisphere countries where successful agriculture poses some major challenges – Australia and South Africa.

With vast, dry regions being farmed, often under frequent drought conditions, need – rather than cost savings and productivity – has driven initial development of some of the world’s leading precision agriculture systems.

 A good example of the development of this technology in the Southern Hemisphere is the history of the Australian-based KEE Technologies.

Over a period of 25 years, KEE had developed highly innovative display and variable rate control technology, based around sophisticated software to control sprayers and application rates.

Today, precision agriculture is about three key elements:
1.Saving time
2.Reducing cost
3.Environmental stewardship
These three elements are the building blocks for the rise in the precision agriculture market.

Saving Time
The latest precision agriculture technology delivers significant timesaving opportunities, whether it’s a family-owned farm or a large corporate agriculture business. Typically on family farms, everyone is stretched for time – so saving time on larger-scale jobs frees farmers, their families and staff up for other “must-do” jobs, as well as more free time to give them a better quality of life.
On large agribusiness enterprises, timesavings translate into higher productivity and increased yields. And because of the scale of these operations, the return on investment can be very rapid indeed.

Reducing Cost
The latest precision agriculture technology offers significant opportunities for cost savings across a whole range of farming activities, including:

-Reduced requirements for seed, nutrients, pesticides and other chemicals
-Tasks are done right, first time, every time, any time (24/7)
-Water management
-Higher productivity
-Reduced fuel usage.

As an example, very-large farms – such as in the American Midwest, Canada, Australia, Brazil or South Africa – where an operator jumps in the tractor in the morning and, by mid-afternoon has reached one end of a farm field and is only just coming back.

When you’ve got a field length of many miles, imagine being just six inches out every mile: consider the amount of seed wasted on unprepared land, tilled land wasted if it’s not seeded, or the potential to burn the crop if you put double the fertilizer on one strip, not to mention the cost of the inputs.

And unlike in construction, where if a job’s not done right, it can usually be redone, in agriculture the consequences of an error can be more critical.

If you double seed, if you put on the wrong amount of fertilizer or pesticide … the consequences can be very expensive – and not readily apparent until it’s much too late.

Water management is another area where there will be increasing opportunities for cost savings, especially as water becomes a scarcer and increasingly expensive commodity in many regions of the world.

Precision land leveling technology allows a farmer to accurately level or slope the land and control the amount of water arriving at any particular point.

This increases the efficiency of irrigation with far more accurate absorption rates. Precision land forming also allows the farmer to improve drainage and eliminate low wet areas.

Environmental Stewardship
Precision agriculture technology is playing a significant role in reducing the environmental impacts of farming. On the one hand, it reduces pollution and runoff, through lower chemical use, minimal overspray, better targeting – because sprays, nutrients, etc., are only used where they are needed.

“Prescription farming” is the new catchphrase for this unprecedented ability to save time, chemicals and money on any farming operation. A perfect example of the latest technology is Topcon’s CropSpec, with its on-the-go crop canopy sensing, so that chemicals are only applied as needed.

Combine this technology with a weather station, and farmers can ensure they only spray when the conditions are right (whether day or night) – for example, avoiding spraying when wind conditions are not suitable.

Crop canopy sensing offers further opportunities for saving money. In the past, too many farmers have seen profits go “blowing in the wind” through wasted fertilizer, pesticide or water when applying to areas where it is not needed.

With below two-centimeter accuracy, particularly using the latest electric steering technology, the farmer travels on exactly the same track each time; that translates into significant fuel saving with maintaining that single track over many miles of plowing, seeding or spraying. And, the land benefits because less soil is compacted by the equipment wheels.

Further benefits of precision guidance include far more accurate tilling and seeding, so that less soil is disturbed, because farmers are only tilling the exact areas needed.

This also translates to lower time, energy and resource inputs. Machines and implements are precisely controlled to run on exactly the same swathe spacing, so there are no gaps or overlaps.

What does the future hold for precision agriculture?
There are a few key developments, mostly still in their infancy stages, that are truly going to change the face of farming around the world. User interface improvements: A big factor for farmers will be massive improvements in ease of use of technological innovations. While all manufacturers develop and promote products designed to achieve essentially the same thing, every manufacturer uses different operator interfaces.

With some systems it is essential to read the manual to figure out how to use it; with others, the system is so intuitive that ease-of-use is apparent, so that operation is possible without having to ever look at a manual.

Telematics: Another big change coming is in the field of telematics – which allows users to remotely monitor critical operating conditions and status of machines – whether in a field five miles away, or on the other side of the world.

Telematics brings together advanced GPS or GNSS technology, wireless communication, and web-based equipment management software to give farmers constant access to key data about all their equipment: operating parameters, location, fuel consumption, speed and direction, potential maintenance issues, and more.

Very soon, farmers virtually anywhere in the world will have access to total farm management systems – from field preparation to harvest – with all specified data monitored around-the-clock.

The addition of telematics to farm operation gives farmers the ability to manage their business from inside their home, wirelessly via computer from a piece of farm equipment, or from a location anywhere in the world (even when they are on vacation!).

All pertinent and specified data available to run their businesses will be literally at their fingertips.

Autonomous operation: Autonomous machine operation, often more popularly (but not entirely correctly) known as remote control, is something we will definitely see in the agricultural industry.

It’s already being used in the mining industry where – as with agriculture – users have access to large-scale sites in which they can fairly easily exclude people from locations where autonomous equipment is operating.

Having said that, autonomous equipment is required to include an array of safety systems to eliminate the risk of accidents if people do stray into a work area.

This is an area in which the global agricultural industry will lead this particular business innovation revolution. The safety issues are much easier to manage and the recognizable benefits and financial returns are apparent.

Autonomous operation combines such technologies as GNSS-based precision guidance, electric steering systems, infrared sensors, gyros and inertial sensors, automated metering, and precise monitoring technology.

Bringing it all together
In the future, farmers will be increasingly reliant on accurate, dependable statistical information, which will then feed into integrated precision agriculture systems to deliver outstanding productivity and crop yields. In the not-too-distant future, we’ll have a farmer sitting in his farmhouse, looking at his computer and saying to his wife, “Marge, we are going to do the planting today.”

Then he will press the “planting” button and his tractor (or tractors) will come out of the shed, head off to the fields and begin planting the right seed in the right location, in the right quantities for optimum growth, all with minimal human intervention.

And if there’s a problem or a machine breakdown, the farmer will be instantly alerted. And as those crops grow and mature, we’ll have sprayers and watering equipment driving along in the farm field. It will see that one plant is not as green or thriving as well as the next, so it will apply a shot of water or nutrient as required. 

 Source: Commodityonline.com