NCERA_OLD180: Site-Specific Crop Management
(Multistate Research Coordinating Committee and Information Exchange Group)
Status: Inactive/Terminating
NCERA_OLD180: Site-Specific Crop Management
Duration: 10/01/2006 to 09/30/2011
Administrative Advisor(s):
NIFA Reps:
Non-Technical Summary
Statement of Issues and Justification
The concept of site-specific crop management (SSCM), commonly known as precision agriculture (PA), holds significant potential for agriculture in the North Central Region of the United States, and the world. The process of applying innovative technologies and principles to identify and manage spatial and temporal variability in crop production is both a promising and challenging scientific enterprise.
Interest in SSCM continues to build in the agricultural community as producers view SSCM as an avenue to improve profitability in an increasingly global economy and reduce the potential for adverse environmental impacts of their operations. As a prominent member of the equipment industry states, From an industry perspective, site specific technology is being adopted at an ever increasing rate, as judged by the success of companies like ours in supplying equipment that growers and custom applicators can use for this purpose (Rudolph). A recent survey concludes: some dealers offer almost every type of precision service that is available (Whipker and Ackridge). They report that three-quarters of the respondents use precision agriculture in some way. The adoption of the SSCM concept brings very significant changes in farm practices and use of information technologies.
SSCM 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 statisticians, and rural sociology. NCERA-180 provides a critical linkage for multi-disciplinary communication and interaction among the scientists conducting research, education, and extension activities. 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 experience for the students.
Objectives
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Facilitate the continued coordination of multidisciplinary research and technology transfer on SSCM among participating states.
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Use the activities of the NCERA-180 to coordinate a response to the scientific challenges and intellectual opportunities surrounding this concept.
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Develop methodologies and relationships to respond to increasing and volatile input, especially fertilizer, costs and their effects on spatial crop management,
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Continue to facilitate collaborative activities to accomplish scientific publication of research, develop and implement education and technology transfer projects, and the organization of symposia at regional, national and international meetings, and
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Improve the university and college educational and extension programs by bringing together the information from the various NCERA-180 members and sharing teaching modules.
Procedures and Activities
To achieve the objectives of the NCERA-180 committee, participants will meet annually to disseminate research results and share extension/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 organically evolve from bringing together and facilitating discussions of scientists from different perspectives. But the annual NCERA-180 meetings will be organized to promote such efforts between and within states. Gaps in research and technology transfer will be identified and addressed.
One specific focus of the near-term upcoming NCERA-180 committee meetings will be how to handle increased and increasingly volatile fertilization costs in SSCM. The increased costs and the need for greater fertilizer use efficiency promote the use of smaller, more numerous management zones that conform to the fine scale of fertilizer application now possible with contemporary variable-rate applicators and automatic guidance systems. Agronomists, crop scientists, and soil scientists need to improve management zone generation and management. Also, engineering issues of applicator accuracy become more important, as well as the use of advanced geospatial information and analysis techniques to better delineate the zones. The rapidly-changing economic picture and spatial complexity in transformation, movement, and crop-use of soil nutrients 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. These tasks, and assessing the collateral implications for pests and remote sensing, will be divided among five working groups.
Meetings of the NCERA-180 have led to sessions and symposia being planned and developed for the annual meetings of disciplinary societies such as ASA-CSA-SSSA and ASABE. As just one 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. This will become 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.
Previous work by the NCERA-180 committee has surveyed and summarized the undergraduate university and college courses and the covered material, as discussed at an invited session at the 2005 ASAE meeting and on http://bse.ufl.edu/adamchuk/pa_teaching . The committee is currently studying these offerings and will discuss the potential for sharing educational modules at the 2007 meeting. The selected modules will be organized by their developers and transferred to prospective users at other colleges and universities. The experiences of the adopters will be discussed in subsequent meetings and iterations made to improve the information transfer and the educational experiences. This education will help meet the dire need for SSCM-savvy individuals who "are wanted for skills and knowledge that owners don't have the time to learn but are nonetheless required on todays large crop farms." (Wherspann).
Expected Outcomes and Impacts
- The primary expected outcome of NCERA-180 is the <ul> <li>Substantial improvements in SSCM through multidisciplinary and multi-state research and technology transfer.</ul>
- This will be achieved through the collaborative development and application of improved techniques to manage spatial variability in crop production and the knowledge transfer to other researchers, educators, extension professionals, farmers, and agricultural industry personnel. Specific examples of this work include such outcomes as: <ul><li>Based upon the reports, discussion, and results of NCERA-180 meetings, methodologies will be developed for specifying management zones in response to increased and increasingly volatile energy prices and their effects on fertilization. <li>Based upon background work at NCERA-180 meetings, there will be plans established to include appropriate interdisciplinary symposia and sessions at disciplinary meetings such as those of ASA-CSA-SSSA, ASABE, and AAEA. <li>The work on sharing educational modules will result in the improvement of university and college courses a broader perspective and knowledge. Similar sharing will improve extension efforts.</ul>
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
Shanahan, J.F., J.S. Schepers, D.D. Francis, G.E. Varvel, W.W. Wilhelm, J.M. Tringe, M.R. Schlemmer, and D.J. Major. 2001. Use of remote sensing imagery to estimate corn grain yield. Agron. J. 93:583-589.
Raun, W.R., J.B. Solie, G.V. Johnson, M.L. Stone, R.W. Mullen, K.W. Freeman, W.E. Thomason, and E.V. Lukina. 2002. Improving nitrogen use efficiency in cereal grain production with optical sensing and variable rate application. Agron. J. 94:815-820.
Khosla, R., K. Fleming, J.A. Delgado, T.M. Shaver, and D.G. Westfall. 2002. Use of site-specific management zones to improve nitrogen management for precision agriculture. J. Soil and Water Conserv. 57:513-518.
Lowenberg-DeBoer, J. 2000. Comment on Site-specific crop management: adoption patterns and incentives. Rev. Agric. Econ. 22:245-250.
Kitchen, N.R., K.A. Sudduth, D.B. Myers, S.T. Drummond, and S.Y. Hong. 2005. Delineating productivity zones on claypan soil fields using apparent soil electrical conductivity. Computers and Electronics in Agric. 46:285-308.
Pierce, F.J., and P. Nowak. 1999. Aspects of precision agriculture. Adv. Agron. 67:1-85.
Darr, M.J., T.S. Stombaugh, and S.A. Shearer. 2005. Controller area network based distributed control of autonomous vehicles. Trans. of the ASAE 48:479-490.
Franzen, D.W. 2004. Delineating nitrogen management zones in a sugarbeet rotation using remote sensing a review. J. of Sugar Beet Research 41:47-60.
Bullock, D.G., D.S. Bullock, E.D. Nafziger, T.A. Doerge, S.R. Paszkiewicz, P.R. Carter, and T.A. Peterson. 1998. Does variable rate seeding of corn pay? Agron. J. 90:830-836.
Rudolph, W. 2006. Personal communication. Technical Director, Midwest Technologies.
Wehrspann, J. 2006. The new recruits. Farm Industry News. May/June. pp. 8- 10, 13.
Whipker, L.D., and J.T. Akridge. 2005. 2005 Precision agricultural services dealership survey results. Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics. Staff Paper # 05-11.