ABSTRACT
The chapters in this book illustrate the range of possibilities that the approaches embodied in precision agriculture (PA) offer in terms of improving agricultural management, of reducing the effects of agriculture on the environment and of supporting the need for food security for an increasing world population. The adoption of PA has not been straightforward and this is probably because it was technology-driven at the outset. How could the ‘new toys’ that engineers produced be used? This applied very much to the yield monitor, but it is yield mapping that has driven PA forward. Farmers throughout time have recognized the variation present in their land and this was originally dealt with by managing small parcels (fields) in a similar way. As technology increased with new farm machinery, fields also increased in size and so did the variation within them. Farmers were intuitively aware of this, but the new yield mapping possibilities showed them the reality of the within-field variation in yield. Again farmers often know some of the causes of this variation at the broad scale, but not at the finer scale to gain greater insight that would help with better management. As the various scientific disciplines associated with agriculture such as soil science, hydrology, crop science, the study of weeds and diseases, nutrient management and so on became involved with PA it became clear that this was much more than a technological revolution but also an agricultural one. The demands of PA are now driving forward the technology and this can be seen clearly in weed management, where sophisticated sprayers are being developed that can switch on and off a herbicide or pesticide according to the distribution of weeds and pests.
