The Core Advantages of Precision Agriculture

Precision agriculture leverages GPS, GIS, and remote sensing to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and protect the environment by enabling site-specific management of soil, crops, and resources for improved agricultural productivity.

FREMONT, CA: Precision agriculture and site-specific farming enabled by GPS and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) facilitates the efficient manipulation and analysis of geospatial data through real-time data collection and precise positioning. GPS technology plays an important role in various aspects of farm management, including field mapping, soil sampling, tractor guidance, crop scouting, variable rate applications, and yield mapping. Additionally, GPS allows farmers to operate effectively under low-visibility conditions such as rain, fog, dust, and darkness.

Crop yields and production techniques were difficult to correlate with land variability in the past. As a result, they were not able to develop the most effective soil and plant treatment strategies that could have enhanced their production. Precision agriculture enables more precise application of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, leading to reduced expenses, higher yields, and a more eco-friendly farm through better control of chemical dispersion. 

Precision agriculture is revolutionizing the way farmers and agribusinesses perceive their land. By collecting geospatial information on soil, plant, and animal requirements and prescribing and applying site-specific treatments, precision agriculture increases agricultural production and protects the environment. It used to be that farmers treated their fields uniformly, but now they are seeing the benefits of micromanaging them. As high-technology tools become more accurate, cost-effective, and user-friendly in the agricultural community, precision agriculture is gaining popularity. Onboard computers, data collection sensors, and GPS time and position reference systems are among the innovations.

According to many, precision agriculture can only be beneficial to large farms with huge capital investments and experience with information technology. This is not the case. All farmers can benefit from inexpensive and easy-to-use methods and techniques. By using GPS, GIS, and remote sensing, land and water use can be improved. A more efficient use of fertilizers and other soil amendments, determination of the economic threshold for treating pest and weed infestations, and protection of natural resources can yield additional benefits for farmers.

GPS equipment manufacturers have developed several tools to help farmers and agribusinesses become more productive and efficient. Nowadays, a lot of farmers rely on GPS-based products to improve their farming activities.GPS receivers collect location information for mapping field boundaries, roads, irrigation systems, and disease and weed problems in crops. Precision GPS allows farmers to create farm maps with accurate acreage for field areas, road locations, and distances between points of interest. In order to collect soil samples or monitor crop conditions, farmers can use GPS to locate specific locations in the field year after year.