Crops and soils are not uniform but vary according to spatial location. Large-scale nonuniformities have long been countered with different cropping practices in different regions. But precision farming responds to spatial variability within individual fields or orchards. This Ieads to a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly agriculture by
• Increasing food production
• Optimizing the use of restricted resources of water and land
• Reducing environmental pollution
• Engaging the efficiency capabilities of intelligent farm machinery
• Improving the performance of farm management
Precision farming concepts include:
• More accurate farm work by better adjustments of settings and by improved monitaring
and control mechanisms
• Localized fertilizing on demandin accordance with the variability of soils, nutrients,
available water, and plant growth
• Weed and pest control by localized crop production needs
• Automated information acquisition and information management with wellstructured databases, geographic information systems (GIS), highly sophisticated decision-support models, and expert-knowledge systems in integrated systems connected by standardized communication links.
Precision farming is not a fixed system, but rather a set of general concepts that may have different physical realizations with
• Different soil types under different climate conditions
• Different farm management systems and production Ievels
• Different mechanization solutions
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