ABSTRACT
Agriculture dominates the world’s land use decisions. The urgent need for doubling farm production over the next 25 years on less land with less water through further intensification would inevitably involve substantial social, economic, and environmental costs. Identification of tools to minimize such costs through enhanced productivity and economic profits while simultaneously conserving the environment is, therefore, crucial. Precision agriculture (PA) is one of such tools catching worldwide attention since the early 1990s. Research interest in PA grew so rapidly that by July 2005 as many as seven international conferences in the United States and five European conferences in the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Germany, and Sweden respectively, and one Asian conference in Malaysia were held. Further, an international journal Precision Agriculture is published by Springer Netherlands (formerly by Kluwer Academic Publishers).
