NCERA_old180: Precision Agriculture Technologies for Food, Fiber, and Energy Production
(Multistate Research Coordinating Committee and Information Exchange Group)
Status: Inactive/Terminating
NCERA_old180: Precision Agriculture Technologies for Food, Fiber, and Energy Production
Duration: 10/01/2011 to 09/30/2016
Administrative Advisor(s):
NIFA Reps:
Non-Technical Summary
Statement of Issues and Justification
The concept of precision agriculture (PA) holds significant potential for agriculture not only in the North Central Region of the United States, but around the world. The process of applying innovative technologies and principles to identify and manage spatial and temporal variability in agricultural production is a promising and challenging scientific pursuit.
By 2050 worldwide demand for food is expected to increase by 70% (UN-FAO, 2009) and demand for energy by more than 40% (DOE-EIA, 2010). To meet these needs, production systems will need to be intensified and made sustainable in the long run. Precision technologies have a proven record of reducing crop inputs, reducing degradation of our soil, water, and air resources, and minimizing the impact of agriculture on global climate change.
Adoption of PA has been rapid in some crops/regions, but severely lacking in others. A 2010 Ohio study found a 39% producer adoption rate of one or more precision agriculture technologies (Diekmann and Batte, 2010). While guidance technologies and applications based on guidance such as sprayer nozzle and boom controls and planter controls have been rapidly adopted in the North Central Region, applications that depend on spatial interrelationships such as variable rate applications of fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides have not seen continued growth in adoption. The spatial and temporal patterns of agricultural fields are like any biologically-based systemmore complicated than they often appear, influenced by dozens of factors and their interactions, and often not responding consistently to management inputs.
PA is a broad-based concept, drawing on the expertise and experience of a number of disciplines. NCERA-180 members and participants represent crop, soil, and weed sciences; entomology, plant pathology, agricultural engineering, applied economics, spatial statistics, and rural sociology, among others. NCERA-180 provides a critical linkage for multi-disciplinary communication and interaction among the scientists conducting research, education, and extension activities. The science of PA is being advanced not only in academic settings, but in the hundreds of companies that provide equipment, technological support services, and advice. NCERA-180 encourages industry representation to maintain an open and realistic discussion. Annual meetings provide a forum for in-depth discussion and analysis of new research developments and coordination of present and future multi-state projects.
Today's agricultural scientists must be concerned with the training of scientists for tomorrow. Communication and coordination of relevant materials that can be used in the curriculum of our universities is an on-going responsibility of NCERA-180 members. The courses at individual colleges and universities tend to focus on the research experiences and expertise of the instructors. This committee works to broaden the learning experiences of students.
Precision farming has the potential to differentially transform the productive capacity and minimize the variability of production systems amidst weather extremes and landscape variability by optimizing crop responses over time and space. We intend to advance the science and application of precision crop management, provide knowledge and support to those utilizing precision farming, and to inform and motivate the next generation of leaders in this field. This will benefit society by enhancing the security of food, fiber, and energy production systems, simultaneously reduce the impact or even enhance local soil, water, and air quality, and as a result reduce agricultures impact on global climate change.
Objectives
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Facilitate cross-disciplinary, academic/industry research partnerships to address complex issues within cropping systems and regions.
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Build experiential learning opportunities in precision applications for secondary education, community colleges and universities.
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Provide human expertise and a comprehensive body of resource materials to test and validate new offerings, promote adoption, and expedite applications across cropping systems and regions.
Procedures and Activities
To achieve the objectives of the NCERA-180 committee, participants will meet annually to disseminate research results and share extension and educational successes. This organization of multi-disciplinary, multi-state, and multi-commodity efforts has been the most significant achievement of NCERA-180. However, it is difficult to top-down pre-plan such research, education, and extension efforts. They must sometimes organically evolve by bringing together and facilitating discussions of scientists from different perspectives. This has never been more important as it is now because of the recent shift in USDA research funding in favor of large trans-disciplinary research projects. The annual NCERA-180 meetings will develop an even greater focus to promote these efforts among states. Gaps in research and technology transfer will be identified and addressed.
We are broadening our focus beyond food and fiber to also include energy production consistent with national USDA priorities. For example, site-specific technologies related to mitigating climate change and precision technologies for bioenergy production were a major focus in the 2009 meeting in Portsmouth, Virginia and will be again for the 2011 meeting in Arkansas. Climate change and sustainable energy have become major NIFA priorities and many of our members collaborated in submitting a large CAP proposal in 2010.
Our priorities will continue to include topics such as precision management for improved fertilizer efficacy. The increased costs and the need for greater fertilizer use efficiency promote the use of smaller, more numerous management zones that conform to the smaller scale of fertilizer application now possible with contemporary variable-rate applicators and automatic guidance systems. Agronomists, bioscience engineers, and soil scientists need to improve management zone generation and interpretation. Volatile fertilizer costs and crop prices, an increasing emphasis on the deleterious effects of off-site nutrient movement, and the dynamics associated with nutrient inputs and crop removal cause the fertilizer response curve accuracy to also be more critically important. The integration and implications of these issues and the development of management zone guidelines across locations and commodities will be a major focus of this committees research efforts.
Publications will remain a high priority. For example, a follow up to "GIS Applications in Agriculture" (Pierce and Clay, 2007) will include new volumes on "Nutrient Management and Energy Efficiency" (Clay and Shanahan, 2011) and "Invasive Species" (Clay, 2011). A new contract has been signed with CRC press to develop a new volume on "Conservation Planning" that is expected to be published in 2012. Our members are also planning to develop a follow up book to "The State of Site-Specific Management of Agriculture" (Pierce and Sadler, 2007). Part of the focus of each meeting has been and will continue to be on collaborative publication efforts. A major publication effort in eXtension is occurring that developed from our group and is led by John Nowatzki and Bruce Erickson. The plan is to go on-line on March 1st. They are working on 50 extension publications, 100 FAQs, developing learning modules on extension, and developing interactive on-line tools.
For the next term of the proposal we will continue to improve communication within our group. A website was created for our group in 2010 (temporary URL - https://sites.google.com/site/ncera180/) that links to our current proposal and previous meetings. We will expand this website to organize our information (e.g., publications) and activities (e.g., conferences).
Members will continue to have an active role and leadership in many professional organizations including the International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA; http://www.internationalsocietyofprecisionagriculture.org/). We also will continue to be integral in the development and planning of the International Conference on Precision Agriculture (ICPA; http://www.icpaonline.org/). Informal, impromptu collaboration at NCERA-180 has led to sessions and symposia being planned and developed for the annual meetings of disciplinary societies such as ASA-CSA-SSSA and ASABE. For example, NCERA-180 led the development of the 2005 ASA-CSA-SSSA symposium on Emerging Technologies for Real-Time Integrated Agriculture. The 200 attendees heard from engineers, as well as research leaders from the agronomic societies. Papers from this symposium were published as a special issue of the journal Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. SSCM topics are now a big part of disciplinary annual meetings. However, this inherently-interdisciplinary topic would tend to be approached from only one perspective at these meetings without continued efforts to broaden the exposure of meeting attendees. The development of such efforts will continue to be a key part of NCERA-180 annual meetings and correspondence, including a goal of one interdisciplinary session per year rotated between disciplinary societies.
Expected Outcomes and Impacts
- The primary expected outcome of NCERA-180 is an improvement in precision agricultural management through trans-disciplinary and multi-state research and technology transfer. This will be achieved through the collaborative development and application of improved techniques to manage spatial variability for food, fiber, and energy production and the knowledge transfer to other researchers, educators, extension professionals, farmers, and agricultural industry personnel. Specific examples are: 1) Based upon the reports, discussion, and results of NCERA-180 meetings, multiple books and extension materials will be published in this next term; 2) Based upon background work at NCERA-180 meetings, appropriate interdisciplinary symposia and sessions will be included as a part of disciplinary (e.g., ASA-CSA-SSSA, ASABE, and AAEA) and inter-disciplinary (e.g., ICPA) meetings. 3) The work on sharing educational modules will result in the improvement of university and college courses by providing a broader perspective and knowledge. Similar sharing will improve extension efforts.
Projected Participation
View Appendix E: ParticipationEducational Plan
Individuals involved in NCERA-180 will disseminate information to university students in classroom settings and Extension personnel will provide educational opportunities for state clientele via oral presentations and fact sheets. The NCERA-180 committee will support these educational activities by providing datasets and analytical methodologies to educators. Materials that will be provided to educators will be based upon the objectives and expected outcomes of the NCERA-180 committee. Development of regional, national, and international symposia will also be an educational outlet for information gathered by the NCERA-180 committee.
Organization/Governance
The recommended Standard Governance for multistate research activities include the election of a Chair, a Chair-elect, and a Secretary. All officers are to be elected for at least two-year terms to provide continuity. Administrative guidance will be provided by an assigned Administrative Advisor and a CSREES Representative.
Literature Cited
Clay, D.E., and John F. Shanahan. 2011. GIS Applications in Agriculture, Volume Two: Nutrient Management for Energy Efficiency. CRC Press (IN PRESS).
Clay, S. 2011. GIS Applications in Agriculture, Volume Three: Invasive Species. CRC Press. (IN PRESS)
Diekmann, F., and M.T. Batte. 2010 Ohio Farming Practices Survey: Adoption and Use of Precision Farming Technology in Ohio. Experimentation report AEDE-RP-0129-10. Publication can be found on-line at http://tiny.cc/Diekmann_Batte.
DOE-EIA. 2010. International Energy Outlook 2010 - Highlights. Found on-line at http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/highlights.html.
UN-FAO. 2009. 2050: A third more mouths to feed. Found on-line at http://www.fao.org/news/story/0/item/35571/icode/en/.
Pierce, F.J., and D.E. Clay. 2007 GIS Applications in Agriculture. CRC Press.
Pierce, F.J., and E.J. Sadler. 2007 The State of Site-Specific Management of Agriculture. ASA/CSSA/SSSA, Madison, WI.