Sharing Benefits in Realising Precision Agriculture
The organisers of the Community on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo Information (CAPIGI) conference explain the GNSS use in farming.
Modern agriculture is going through a major shift since the introduction of machine guidance systems. The use of GNSS is a major innovation in agriculture. Since its’ introduction in agriculture in the beginning of this century applications are developed and popping up rapidly. The interest of farmers however did not keep pace, mainly because the variety of systems offered different solutions for different problems and (most importantly) require different rates of investments. To farmers it was not clear if the cheaper systems offered what was needed, nor the other way around, if the expensive systems would ever provide the return on investment.
For years, GNSS was something for the innovators and front-runners. However, now slowly, GNSS no is longer an add-on or post-sales refit, but it gets installed in new tractors and machines just like the cabin’s air conditioning. It is recognised as a useful tool to make life easier. To give an example the ‘Fieldfact’ project (www.fieldfact.com) investigated European farmers’ motivations to invest in GNSS and came to three classes in order of priority. The first class of reasons to invest in GNSS is related to the increase in productivity. The second class is the ability to develop a whole farm information management system where field data are integrated with planning and administration. Location serves a primary key to link data. The third class is the need to comply with legislations as GNSS helps farmers to prove and improve their compliance to environmental protection laws.
GNSS helps this farmer to focus on the work (Image Courtesy of SBG Innovation Netherlands, www.sbg.nl)
“Precision Pays” is the Farmers’ Credo
Let’s look into how GNSS is improving the productivity. The most visible and obvious reason to use GNSS is to prepare and cultivate land in parallel lines where no parts are forgotten or treated twice. This gives a substantial reduction in fuel and total traffic operations time. GNSS also allows farmers to work in the dark, which is particularly important in peak periods such as planting/sowing and when harvesting. And as a farmer expressed “Even my son now is able to plough fields in straight lines”. GNSS has a serious impact on the labour film of the average farm.
“Precision Pays” is the credo and for many farmers this is the starting point for GNSS equipment investments. On board computers maintain all relevant information needed when revisiting the field, like the baselines of operation (so-called AB-line). The accuracy needs for field traffic guidance depend very much on farm type, cultivation type and the type of farmer. In Europe, the general tendency is that more accuracy is desired.
Looking at the next set of farmers’ motives to invest in GNSS: the desire to manage and optimise all farm activities. Overlooking the work at the farm, time spent on one field to cultivate a difficult corner, might be penny wise. However this same period of time would be better spent on another field, increasing total financial farm margins. Also, monitoring all activities and operations per field, per cultivation, per machine etcetera, give modern farmers an incredible insight in where his money is earned and where the farm leaks spending money.
Farmers tend to invest in GNSS to guide and track their equipment and hence build up evidence for next year, next crop or the next investment planning. The whole-farm information management system connects field operations to weather conditions, soil sensors and other sources of information to create the big picture. GNSS no longer is a machine characteristic, as is the Air Conditioner, but now is part of the information system of the so-called ‘open air enterprise’ that can be managed and optimised.
The third set of motives to move to GNSS is the wish of farmers to prove and improve their compliance to all kinds of regulations. Within European agriculture the themes rural development, landscape and environment are hugely intertwined, more and more confronting the European farmer with regulations formalising necessary interactions. The complexity of rules however requires new and better tools.
Different activities and the corresponding required accuracies
GNSS of course offers solutions and in specific cases has been used already. In the Netherlands for instance, manure transports carry an obliged GNSS tracking system to follow the nutrients from animal farms to arable farms. Having each transport being subject to a contract and farmers proving correct delivery. But GNSS can also help in keeping phyto-sanitary regulations, in for instance potato growing. And GNSS equipped sprayers can automatically maintain the obliged distance from open water. A very strong trend now is coming with the so-called ‘prescription farming’. Although already coined in the ‘90s, today’s equipment makes it feasible for farmers to benefit from the principle.
Prescription Farming means varying the applications of fertilizer, herbicides and irrigation based on the within field variability, looking at typical management units of 10-30 m2. The main benefit for farmers is a substantial reduction of inputs compared to uniform applications based on the most needed spot – or even the average – in the field. For herbicides during potato haulm killing reductions of 60% have been reported. This requires precise sensing and precise application. Other farmers even vary their planting or sowing density based on soil type in order to get a more homogeneous product.
European Governments Stimulate the Uptake of GNSS
It is very interesting to see that European regional and national governments discover the opportunities that prescription farming and guidance can bring to achieve their policy goals. In particular concerning landscape management and environmental stewardship the new techniques – when applied at the majority of farms – create opportunities to increase the economic viability of farms and hence the rural economy. While at the same time reducing the side effects of agriculture on water, soil and nature.
Finding the optimised route (Image Courtesy of Aad Klompe, projected lines by Sytze de Bruin)
With these benefits in mind, governments stimulate the uptake of GNSS, working on concerted actions to remove the barriers. Initiatives are taken to provide networked solutions for RTK and to organise the necessary sensing data from satellites for prescription farming. Also, governments with their data collection for administrative and control purposes look into opportunities to share these data and to consider farmers as data providers as well. We are looking into a very interesting solution here where all stakeholders benefit from a shared approach and from sharing data.
Another interesting aspect of machine guidance in agriculture is the fact that the diversity of solution providers for GNSS augmentation signals allows farmers to optimise to their needs. Global commercial GNSS augmentation providers like OmniSTAR and StarFire cover a very large share of the market offering a stable quality for a large group of users. On the very high accuracy side, they are complemented by RTK solutions.
In the Netherlands several national commercial RTK networks are available that provide higher accuracies. On the other side the Open Signal of EGNOS (the European WAAS equivalent) is providing sub meter accuracy useful in many agricultural applications and completely free of charge. But accuracy is addictive. And high accuracy signals are also useful for activities requiring lower accuracies. Figure 2. presents an overview of different agricultural activities and their required accuracy.
Showing in yellow the planned swaths after accuracy guidance, in green the new flower beds (Image Courtesy of Leo Klompe, projected lines by Sytze de Bruin)
Case: Large Scale Farming in a Small Scale Landscape
The benefits of high accuracy guidance are well demonstrated in the following case. In the Netherlands farmers have a large amount of small fields (< 10 ha), which are separated by ditches or tree lines. The shapes and sizes of fields are considering modern equipment not optimal. In other words, the fields are not a logical multitude of a single working path. Often, when starting on one edge of the field, the last working path involves a lot of inefficient machine manoeuvring, sometimes even with varying width along the edges of the field. And in addition, other rural stakeholders like water boards, nature conservation organisations and tourist boards encourage farmers to create flowering field margins with an extensive management regime. These flowering edges of the field are well appreciated by biologists, but also by citizens getting away from the crowded European cities, choosing spending their time off by taking a tour through the rural landscape. Furthermore the flower strips are adequate buffers around open water, preventing unwanted side effects of the agricultural practices like for instance herbicide leakage.
Farmers and scientists in this case worked together to create a set of tools to optimise the cultivation on the centred area of a field, creating a set of flowering margins around. Farmers had their fields accurately measured by a surveyor using a quad mounted RTK system. Based on the exactly measured boundaries of a field and the widths of machines, the toolset optimised the agricultural parcel framed in a more natural habitat. The result was an internet based system where farmers based on their operating requirements were able to enter their cm-accurate field boundaries receiving an optimal solution for their cultivated area and field margins.
Of course the agricultural land in this case is not producing as much as before, since parts of it are now sowed with flowers. But measured in man- or machine hours, the production increases. The time gained is better spent on other fields. To conclude, as this solution minimises the amounts of inefficient machine manoeuvring, the efficiency of agricultural production increases. Perfect, while the side effect is that the flower strips improve the touristic value of the region and improve the bio-diversity within an agricultural area and are adequate buffers around open water.
Surveying field boundaries. Here done by participants of the CAPIGI 2007 conference (Image Courtesy of Tamme van der Wal)
Concluding Remarks
It is still a long road before all farmers will use GNSS to optimise their fieldwork but it is currently developing at an increasing rate. Thanks to research we now know European farmers’ motivations to invest in GNSS, giving the geo-information industry information to act upon and governments material to think about. It is clear that besides farmers other stakeholders share benefits in realising precision or prescription agriculture. This and other issues are discussed during the conference of the Community on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo Information (CAPIGI –see textbox), which will be held 4-6 April 2011 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The increased use of geomatics in agriculture is adding to a greener agriculture and a greater environmental stewardship while maintaining the economic vitality of farms.
04-06 April CAPIGI
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Internet: www.capigi.eu
