Precision farming: European concepts and trends

In Europe, farming is dominated by family-owned businesses. Due to the increasing use of machines on an extra-operational basis, especially for harvesting, farmers lose valuable and formerly available local information. Such a loss of information may be compensated with GPS and a yield-measuring sensor system, a technology which also provides the basis for more selective soil testing. The data so obtained may be used for the purpose of drawing up target oriented local application maps, which, if both growth rates and water content of the soil are taken into account, will allow a demand-oriented real-time N-fertilization. Considering currently available techniques for obtaining yield data, such systems may be able to assert themselves in European agriculture on a larger scale at the turn of the millennium.     «

In Europe, farming is dominated by family-owned businesses. Due to the increasing use of machines on an extra-operational basis, especially for harvesting, farmers lose valuable and formerly available local information. Such a loss of information may be compensated with GPS and a yield-measuring sensor system, a technology which also provides the basis for more selective soil testing. The data so obtained may be used for the purpose of drawing up target oriented local application maps, which, if...     »