GIS

Agriculture 3.0: the Digital Field in 3D

Food production is rapidly moving toward 3D as the Digital Farm becomes a reality. This change is not solely about mapping, it also involves a greater understanding of the underlying agricultural production processes leading toward higher yields, and it includes downstream distribution and marketing of agricultural products globally.

Hype and jive

When Gabriel Tarde, the prominent French scientist sociologist wrote about the Diffusion of Innovation in the 1890′s, he proposed a model that identified early adopters of technology through to laggards as they come to later accept technology. The innovators were clearly the first people to use new methods and approaches.  If we look at global positioning system (GPS) technology, remote sensing  and variable rate farming, it would appear that these combinations of new approaches – deemed precision farming – were largely present in the mid-1980′s.

During that period, and up until recently, many agricultural producers began to use these technologies with different rates of success. That success rate was largely dependent upon the still maturing technologies of GPS which later evolved to better map-to-GPS systems, GIS questioning and difficulties which later matured to online GIS data integration and online data processing and inappropriate sensor technologies that would later become more dependable, easier to program and install.

These factors are combined with higher resolution remote sensing data that was once difficult to handle and acquire over a growing season, impacting usefulness, until today’s remote sensing technologies with higher resolution, higher re-visitation time and data processing software for imagery became readily and easily available.

All of this maturing in farm technologies has also seen significant drops in price and higher levels of localisation for the technology implementation.

This period largely follows the Gartner Hype Cycle for technology innovation that recognises innovation as occurring across a continuum. Maguire describes this hype cycle in terms of an evolution for geotechnologies above.

Maturity and production

For agricultural producers, that period to the left side that coincides with the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ largely coincides with the 1980-90s.  During that time innovators were implementing precision farming technologies for the first time, often with hardship and often not meeting their expectations. Immaturity of technologies in the marketplace reigned and administrative together with wide support did not exist.

Things are different today.

The right side of the chart indicates a period of productivity, and I believe that agriculture is now in that phase. GIS has matured, GNSS is available together with GPS-networks, mapping and cartography for agricultural production are mature and simple to use and remote sensing satellites have both higher resolution and greater re-visitation times.

All of these factors are leading toward the implementation and support of variable rate or precision farming – successfully.

Food and nutrition

Agriculture 3.0 is not only about production. It attempts to model and process information pertaining to the entire food production system – farm to table.

It is not enough to only produce more food by quantity, that food must maintain or improve in quality. Higher quality has greater value for a number of different products, not the least of which is better human health.  To achieve this goal traceability, monitoring and efficiency in the movement of food is an integral component. And, that arises through space and time.

At the same time energy figures prominently into agricultural production. Most sources of man-made nitrogen, for example, are derived through energy production. Sulphur, for instance, is readily available from gas plants. Several nitrogen fertilizers extend from oil processing.  These are in addition of naturally occurring fertilizer compounds.

The environment connects to fertilizer use – plant production, through the challenge to apply them efficiently.That in turn demands monitoring of the soil-plant relationship more closely against these inputs. And that is where 3D comes into play.

Agriculture 3D

To effectively produce food on the landscape demands a focus on the landscape processes that relate to soil and plants. To a large extent, we might say that agriculture is poised to become the first major application of GIS and Chemistry. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, copper, magnesium and a host of other elements are all present and needed for healthy soils and to maximize plant quality and quantity.

Water, light and temperature also play key roles in agriculture. Monitoring and managing them can impact the chemistry surrounding soils and plants. That occurs in 3D space and is not solely a hierarchical process. Instead, it is a dynamic process, and it can contain a series of loops across scales, spaces and time. Furthermore, it is directly linked to land policy and governance as well as being tied to distribution and transport channels – traceability, marketability and efficiency.

Agriculture is more than the map

The production of food and it’s delivery around the globe is a continuous system. It is inter-connected, links to economy and environment and requires greater efficiency.

Those farmers interested in variable rate farming and sustainable farming techniques are today being challenged to pick up the tools of modern geotechnologies to feed a hungry world. The period of disillusionment has passed, the technologies of GIS, GPS and remote sensing are largely mature today and, according to hype cycle, the period of production is upon us.

The 3D Digital Farm that connects on-site farm management to the square meter locally out into the wider global market place is a reality. The delivery of food thousands of kilometers away will increasingly tap the same digital technologies to ask questions like:

• is there GMO material in this food, what kinds and where did it originate?
• what is the quality of the production prior to harvest, do you have records?
• where was this food processed, and what processes were involved?
• is your farm operation leaching vast quantities of fertilizer into streams, or do you have records surrounding on-farm efficiency?
• how can I buy food from your particular farm and ensure it is what was delivered?
• can you prove that agro-ecological approaches produced this food? how?
• is your agricultural production generating vast amounts of greenhouse gas? where are your records?

In summary, agricultural production is changing  and will change further. Geospatial technologies are poised to participate in these  changes in ways that extend beyond traditional approaches. Biology and chemistry will increasingly link to GIS, GPS and remote sensing technologies to deliver a ‘whole plant systems’ for food production. These will extend through to stock markets, delivery systems and global sustainability initiatives. Agricultural producers will have immense opportunities as these changes occur and benefit from the transparency and greater visibility.

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7. Digital Terrain Models: GPS or Aerial-Satellite Sensing?
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