Precision Farming and Protected Cultivation

Concepts and Applications

Sanjeev Kumar, S.N. Saravaiya, A.K. Pandey

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000423310
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Agronomy
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The book consists of 32 chapters featuring the concepts and applications of precision farming
and protected cultivation broadly covered with theoretical and practical approach. The first 8 chapters are
exclusively designed to provide detailed information on concept, need, objectives, benefits, components,
applications and limitations of precision farming; laser leveler and its working mechanism, components
and functioning; mechanized sowing and types of mechanical seeders and their use; approaches for
mapping of soils and plant attributes; site-specific weed and nutrient management; precision management
of insect-pests and diseases; yield mapping in horticultural crops.
An attempt has been made to cover the concept and application of protected cultivation in chapters
from 9 to 30 characteristically highlighting the concept of greenhouse technology, its principles as well as
historical and technological developments, agrivoltaic system, its concept and features, response of plant species
under greenhouse conditions, criteria for the selection of crops and varieties for protected cultivation,
basic considerations for site selection, orientation and designing of greenhouse structures, climate control
mechanisms for cooling and heating in greenhouses, components, accessories and BIS codes for protected
cultivation, types of Irrigation system for greenhouse production system, growing media for greenhouse cultivation, soil pasteurization namely solarization, steam sterilization, chemical sterilization and
augmentation with biological agents, checking the suitability of soil and water for greenhouse crops, plug
tray nursery raising, basics of fertigation in greenhouse production system, packages of practice for
greenhouse cucumber, bell pepper, tomato and melons, potential of pruning as unconventional alternative
for mass multiplication of greenhouse cucumber and tomato, types of soil-less cultures, GAP for
protected cultivation and economic analysis of protected cultivation.
Note: T&F does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

1
PRECISION FARMING: CONCEPT, NEED, OBJECTIVES AND BENEFITS

Background Information

• Agriculture with its allied activities is the largest sector in India revealing 70% dependency of its rural households for their livelihood and has played important roles for food and nutritional security, poverty alleviation, employment generation and sustainable development.
• Indian is the largest producer of cotton, pulses and milk, second largest producer in food grains, fruits and vegetables, and third in egg production. Agriculture sector alone contributes about 14.5% towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India.
• Food grain production has experienced considerably a significant jump from about 51 million tonne during 1950 to 291.95 million tonne in 2019-20. The production of horticulture products has doubled over the past quarter century and the value of global trade in horticulture crops now exceeds that of cereals. For the first time, horticulture production surpassed food production in India during 2013-14 and continues to excel currently.
• India is characteristically a country of small agricultural farms, where approximately 80% of total land holdings in the country are less than 2 ha with 30% irrigated land only.
• India produces a wide variety of agricultural products because of its varied agro-climatic regions but low farm productivity is major concern, which is around 33% of the best agricultural farms world over. Indian farmers can get more remuneration from the same piece of land with fewer inputs, once the productivity gets increased.
• Asia and the Pacific region accounts for more than 70% of the global agricultural population but has only 30% of the world’s arable land. An increase in yield of these regions over the years has largely been due to excessive and indiscriminate use of inputs like irrigation, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, agrochemicals etc. and at considerable expense of its natural resources.
• Soil erosion in this region due to water and wind exceeds the natural soil formation by 30-40 folds. The problem of water quality deterioration is also very serious. Pollution of drinking water in tobacco and rice ecosystems of Malaysia, and of groundwater near vegetable fields in Japan are just two examples. However, the increasing rate of population demands much higher pace in the increase of food production on one side, and needs utmost attention in maintaining harmony with the environment-the core concept of sustainable agriculture.
• Most of the pesticidal recommendations are also region specific, which are on a few random observations of insect-pests and diseases density/severity. Because of substandard quality of agrochemicals often due to adulteration and increased pest resistance, indiscriminate application is now common especially in high valued crops.
• Comprehensive and reliable information on land use, soils (extent of waste lands and degraded lands), agricultural crops, water resources (both surface and underground), natural hazards/ calamities like drought and flood and agro meteorology is essential. Season-wise information on crops, their acreage, vigour and production enables the country to adopt suitable measures to meet shortages if any and implement proper support and procurement policies.
• With increasing population, urbanization and over exploitation of natural resources, there has to be a paradigm shift in farmers’ perception from production towards productivity and profitability. At present, agriculture is facing major challenges due to shrinking land holding, depleting water and other related resources. There is an urgent need for adopting farmer friendly location-specific production and management strategies in a concerted manner to achieve vertical growth in horticulture production with ensured quality of produce and judicious use of natural resources for better return per unit area. In this context, precision farming has potential of utilizing resources per unit of time and area efficiently for achieving targeted production in horticultural crops.
• Precision agriculture is proposed as a key component of the third wave of modern agricultural revolutions. The first agricultural revolution came with the advent of increased mechanization during the period from 1900 to 1930s and each farmer produced enough food to feed about 26 people during this time. The 1960s prompted the “Green Revolution” with new methods of genetic modification, which led to each farmer feeding about 155 people. It is expected that the global population will reach about 9.6 billion by 2050 and food production must effectively double from current levels in order to feed every mouth. With new technological advances in agriculture through precision farming, each farmer will be able to feed 265 people from the same area.

Concept of Precision Farming

Precision Agriculture (PA) also known as precision farming, prescription farming, variable rate technology (VRT), site-specific farming (SSF), site-specific management (SSM), site-specific crop management (SSCM), is considered as the vibrant agricultural system of the 21^st century, as it symbolizes a better balance between reliance on traditional knowledge as well as information and management intensive technologies.

Professor Pierre C. Robert, who is considered as the father of precision farming defined precision fanning as precision agriculture which is not just the injection of new technologies but it is rather an information revolution, made possible by new technologies that result in a higher level, a more precise farm management system. It basically means adding the right amount of input at the right time and the right location within a field. It's all About managing specific sites following the fundamentals of 3 R.

Precision Farming and its approach

Precision agriculture (PA) (“precision farming”, “site-specific farming”, “farming by the foot”, “spatially variable crop production”, “grid farming”), is an innovative conception of agricultural production based on information technologies in crop production.

Precision Agriculture is the application of technologies and principles to manage spatial (space-related/geographic) and temporal (time related) variability associated with all aspects of agricultural production for improving production with environmental safety.

Precision Agriculture can also be defined as a comprehensive system designed to optimize agricultural production through the application of crop information, advanced technologies and management practices.

Definitions of Precision Agriculture Given by US House of Representatives, 1997

Precision Agriculture (PA) is integrated information and production based farming system that is designed to increase long term, site specific and whole farm production efficiency, productivity and profitability, while minimizing unintended impacts on wildlife and the environment.

Site-specific crop management (SSCM): It is a form of precision agriculture whereby decisions on resource application and agronomic practices are improved to fit well to the requirements of crop as per soil heterogeneity of the field.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) refers this kind of agriculture “as needed farming” and define it as “A management system that is information and technology based, site specific and uses one or more of different sources of data like soil types, crops, nutrients, pests, moisture or yield for optimum profitability, sustainability and protection of the environment”.

In simpler words, precision farming can be defined as information and technology (IT) based farm management system to identify, analyze and manage variability within fields by doing all the practices of crop production in right place, at right time and in right way for optimum profitability, sustainability and protection of the land resources.

In India, the average land holdings are very small, even with large and progressive farmers. The suitable definition of precision farming in context to Indian farming, “precise application of agricultural inputs based on soil, weather and crop requirement to maximize sustainable productivity, quality and profitability i.e. minimum input-maximum output approach.

Rationale of Precision Farming

The “Green revolution” (1960s) has made our country self-sufficient in food production attributable to High Yielding Varieties (HYVs), fertilization, irrigation, pesticides and increase in cropping intensity (CI) and lastly mechanization of agriculture. However, Green Revolution Technologies (GRTs) has also led to some challenges, which needs to be addressed for increasing productivity of crops and simultaneously safeguarding ecological interest.

1. Fatigue of Green Revolution: No doubt, India has experienced spectacular growth in agriculture, however the productivity of many major crops are still below the expected levels. India has not achieved even the lowest level of potential productivity of Indian high yielding varieties, while the world’s highest productive country has crop yield levels significantly higher than the upper potential of Indian HYVs.
2. Natural Resource Degradation: The green revolution has also been associated with some negative factors leading to ecological imbalance. Indian environment statistics shows that about 182 million ha of the country’s total geographical area of 328.7 million ha is affected by land degradation, of which large proportion of 141.33 million ha is due to water erosion, 11.50 million ha due to wind erosion, and 12.63 and 13.24 million ha are due to water logging and chemical deterioration (salinity and loss of nutrients), respectively. On the other hand, India shares 17% of world’s population, 1% of gross world product, 4% of world carbon emission, 3.6% of CO₂ emission intensity and 2% of world forest area. Hence, there is a dire need to convert this green revolution into an evergreen revolution with farming systems approach that can help to produce more from the available land, water and labour resources without ecological and social imbalance.

Therefore, it is important to learn the critical differences between traditional and precision farming in order to get basic idea on realistic figures leading to better understanding and adoption of new applications of precision farming.

Traditional farming VS. Precision farming
Arable site is considered as a homogenous for applying treatments/inputs at field level.	Arable site is regarded as different from one point to another and considered as heterogeneous at field level.
Nutrient management is based on representative samples taken from a field.	Nutrient management is based on point like samples (site-specific) taken at specific sites with the use of GPS.
Plant protection applications for diseases and insect-pests are generally made based on average survey done for plant damage.	Plant protection applications are made based on GPS and point like plant survey (specific survey).

Selection and planting of crops and variety (ies) is limited to overall arable site.	Crops and variety (ies) are selected as per the suitability to a specific site/location.
Farm operations are adhered to same machinery in the arable site.	Farm operations by machinery are adjusted specifically to the arable site.
Plant stocks are minimally organized into homogeneous blocks at arable sites, hence scope for better management is less.	Unified plant stocks are organized into homogeneous blocks at arable sites for better management.
Few data are available influencing decision making at arable site.	A lot of data are available to make conclusive decisions for better growth and development of a crop.

The critical differences between traditional and precision faming clearly define the prospects of precision farming for sustainable development of agriculture/ horticulture in India.

Objectives of Precision Farming

Higher profitability and sustainability: Maximum profit can be achieved in each zone or site of a field by optimizing precise application of inputs like variety, seed, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide etc. as per crop demand, which can be determined by weather, soil characteristics (nutrient availability, texture and drainage etc.) and historic crop performance.

Optimizing production efficiency: Identification of variability in yield potential may offer possibilities to optimize production quantity at each site or within each zone using differential approaches under given set of field conditions.

Increasing efficiency of inputs: Efficient use of inputs like fertilizers, seeds etc. according to the yield potential of soil at a given...