ABSTRACT
Precision farming is one of the top 10 innovations in modern agriculture (Crookston 2006). Precision farming is generally defined as doing the right practice at the right location and time at the right intensity. Since its inception in the early 1980s, precision farming has been adopted on millions of hectares of agricultural cropland around the world. The objective of this chapter is to review the history of precision farming and the factors that led to its widespread popularity. The specific focus is on the following aspects of precision farming: soil sampling, geostatistics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), farming by soil, variable rate fertilizer, site-specific farming, management zones, Global Positioning System (GPS), yield mapping, variable rate herbicides, variable rate irrigation, remote sensing, automatic tractor navigation and robotics, proximal sensing of soils and crops, and profitability and adoption of precision farming. For each topic, reference to key groups of researchers and the breakthroughs that helped propel precision farming onward are identified. The chapter concludes with a vision for the future of precision farming.
