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Opportunities in
Precision Agriculture
Arthur Lange, Ph. D.
Trimble Navigation, Ltd.
SOCAP 2010

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What is Precision Agriculture?
Official definition:
“Information-based input management
techniques for maximizing yield and profit”
Emerging new definition:
“Applying the right input at the right
location to result in the most yield & profit
and least environmental impact”
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What’s the need?
 Inherent variability in agriculture – Mother Nature!
 Infinite, diverse species
 Pests and disease
 Soil conditions
 Weather
 Moisture
 Water scarcity
 Rise in input costs: labor, fuel, nutrients
 Need to minimize chemicals & toxins for public
health + environmental sustainability
 Population growth
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Solution: Precision Agriculture
 More accurate Sensors of:
 Moisture in soil
 Nutrients in soil
 Disease
 More accurate Applications of:
 Water
 Fertilizers
 Preventative medicine
 More accurate Planting & Harvesting:
 Right species in appropriate soil
 “Multi-crop mono-crop”
 Efficient candy-picking for readiness
 Reduced labor costs:
 Less labor needed w/ automated machinery
 Less skilled labor needed w/ sophisticated guidance tools
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How is this done?
Common Technologies in PA
 GPS
 Automated machinery & mechanisms
 Remote & wireless sensors
 Aerial sensors
 Centralized field servers
 Companion software analysis tools
 Granular applicators
 MIX & MATCH!
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A few examples:
Soil Sensors
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Soil Moisture SensorLoad Pins

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Lightbar Guidance Steering Aids
with GPS
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Manual steering
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Automatic steering
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Pesticide Applications & Selective
Spraying
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• Controlled rate & airflow of spraying
• Reduced spray on beneficial insects
• Health effects
• Long-term environmental effects
• Discharging spray droplets only
on young flush

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Incentives to Adopt PA
 Smaller farms
 Compete with larger farms with economies of scale
 Larger farms
 Greatly reduce environmental impact
 All farms
 Reduce input costs
 Optimize use of natural resources
 Get quick ROI
 Technology costs coming down
 Easily track:
 All commodities
 Pesticide & fertilizer use
 Environmental compliance
 All farming activities
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Fundamental Constraints
Slow growth of support services, especially
data analysis
High opportunity cost in farmers’ mind:
“I didn’t get into farming to sit at a
computer”
Information-intensive PA can be slow to
adopt (vs embedded knowledge PA)
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Some new innovations…
 Small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
 Remote controlled small ‘plane’ w/ camera sensors
 Disease detection before human eye is able
 Accurate identification of harvest-ready plants
 ~ $2-3k, affordable!
 Developed by Univ. of Florida, Ag & Bio Engineering
 Soil & topology information (STI)
 Electromagnetic radar with automatic sampling
 Precise 4’ deep physical and chemical makeup of soil
 One-time cost affordable to all size farms
 Developed by STI, LLC
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More breatkthroughs coming…
More capable Sensors
 Soil Organic matter (for VR seeding)
 Essential nutrient measurement
 Disease scouting
 Easy data transfer (Network Communications)
 Lower cost
A lot of opportunity in Precision Agriculture
for both small and large farms!
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Thank you!
Art Lange, Ph.D.
Trimble Navigation, Ltd.
Art_Lange@Trimble.COM
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