Pathways to sustainability with digital agriculture

Abstract:

Optimizing the multiple complex tradeoffs between agricultural productivity, food distribution and the environment is a daunting challenge that is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of accelerating food demand and a changing climate. This presentation illustrates how this challenge could be met in a way that balances the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainable food production.

Advances in “big-data” analytics and sensing technologies present alternative pathways to more sustainable agricultural systems, including improved spatial and temporal management of existing cropping systems, as well as system changes that involve new crops and alternative land uses. The presentation will introduce a novel approach that integrates Digital Agriculture technologies to guide precision management of land and N inputs that results in simultaneous improvement of environmental and financial performance of row crop production systems.

Although the precision agriculture technologies that allow for N fertilizer applications at different rates across a field have been available to US farmers since the 1990s, precisely matching crop N needs has remained a challenge. Thus, adopters of variable rate N technology often see slight increases in profitability and marginal reductions in input use, which translates to minimal environmental improvement. A possible explanation for this failure to achieve more substantial and widespread environmental benefits is that thus far, the algorithm developers for precision management have lacked the data and computational tools needed to convert complex geospatial information on soil and plant health status into appropriate crop management actions, leading in some instances to misinterpretation or misuse.