Precision Agriculture in the 21st Century Geospatial and Information Technologies in Crop Management (1997) / Chapter Skim
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4 Public Policy and Precision Agriculture
4 Public Policy and Precision Agriculture
Pages 90-119
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From page 90... ...
The private sector made a significant investment to tailor information technologies for agricultural applications, but the public sector agricultural research community contributed relatively little. It is anticipated that private sector investments in development and diffusion of precision agriculture will continue at a rapid pace.
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From page 91... ...
Private industry has made large investments in these technologies, as well, often leveraged on these public investments. In 1995 the USDA Agricultural Research Service had $4.4 million directly invested in precision agriculture research projects at 15 locations (Agricultural Research Service, 1995~.
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From page 92... ...
. Today the public sector apparatus for research and development of new agricultural technologies consists of USDA's research arms (Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service, and National Agricultural Statistics Service)
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From page 93... ...
These trends point toward more potential for competition between private and public agricultural research and development and a less clear-cut division of labor. Most of the research and development embodied in current precision agriculture technologies has come about either through public investments in defense and space technologies or by the private sector; there has been little investment in precision agriculture by traditional public agricultural research institutions.
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From page 94... ...
Where the private sector does not have incentives to conduct such research, public sector research and development may be required to fill the gaps. In some cases, research and development may be too risky for the private sector to undertake.
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From page 95... ...
Increasing public concern for the environment may encourage technology providers and producers to adopt practices that enhance environmental quality, especially if they add little to production costs, but current legal or administrative requirements offer few direct incentives to do so (Fuglie et al., 1996~. The allocation of research and development spending suggests that the public sector has largely concentrated on the areas where market incentives fail to generate private sector research interest.
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From page 96... ...
Using CRADAs for precision agriculture research and development would blur the distinctions between basic and applied research that this committee propose as criteria for appropriate public and private research roles relating to precision agriculture technologies. Specifically with regard to agronomic and crop management topics, the comm~ttee concludes that the most valuable contributions public laboratories can make to precision agriculture are likely to be basic, pretechnology, nonappropnable research findings that can benefit all private sector developers of precision agnculture technologies.
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From page 97... ...
Some precision agriculture technologies function by permitting adjustment of farming practices (i.e., input application rates) to match variability in production conditions, such as soil nutrient levels or other aspects of soil quality.
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From page 98... ...
These include: · government standards (i.e., the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Spatial Data Transfer Standard and ISO 8211) , · consortium standards (i.e., the Open GIS Foundation and the Agriculture Electronics Association tAEA]
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From page 99... ...
An appropriate role for public agencies is independent, objective evaluation of precision agriculture technologies. Private technology development firms and input suppliers have a natural commercial interest in promoting precision agriculture.
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From page 100... ...
Research collaborators can mine a wealth of on-farm data and use regression analyses and other multivariate statistical methods to isolate the multiple sources of variations that influence economic and environmental outcomes of precision agriculture. These findings can provide invaluable guidance to producers on the expected benefits from adoption of precision agriculture technologies in their particular setting.
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From page 101... ...
Subfield fertilizer response relationships, economic pest control thresholds, and computer-based decision support systems derived from crop growth simulations need to be tested and evaluated under actual field conditions in a variety of circumstances (Heiniger, 1996~. Precision agriculture evaluation activities should be undertaken by both the public and private sectors.
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From page 102... ...
Nutrients, pest management, and soil quality are obvious targets for public research because of their linkage to environmental quality. Nutrient pollution of both surface water and groundwater is a significant problem throughout the United States, and agriculture is a major contributor to nutrient pollution in many areas, such as the Great Lakes region, the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and the Mississippi drainage (where it contributes to Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone problems)
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From page 103... ...
The incentives for and obstacles to producer data sharing need to be fully explored and carefully understood if such cooperative on-farm research is to succeed (see sections on data ownership and privacy)
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From page 104... ...
Thus, research explicitly aimed at elucidating the environmental effects of precision agriculture technologies should also be a priority (Larson et al., 1997~. Decision support system models force consideration of factors and interactions affecting the entire system.
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From page 105... ...
This synthesis could evolve from replacing narrow disciplinary frameworks with the concept of systems derived from crop modeling work (Stone, 19899. Given the development of precision agricultural technologies outside traditional agricultural institutions, it is not clear who should provide scientific, technical, and managerial education needed for precision agriculture.
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From page 106... ...
Such communications services will similarly be essential for taking full advantage of the data-generation capabilities of precision agriculture technologies described previously. Private industry may provide little of this communications infrastructure.
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From page 107... ...
The President's Council on Sustainable Development found precision agriculture to be one of the environmental technologies that offer potential for domestic economic development through increases to domestic productivity and development of export markets in environmental technology (Sustainable Agriculture Task Force, 1996~. Although the notion of universal access to telecommunications has been embodied in federal policy documents such as Principles for a National Information Infrastructure, it is unclear whether and how universal access will become a reality (U.S.
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From page 108... ...
Both the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Agricultural Electronics Association have been developing legal templates and forms for producers to use in asserting ownership over precision agriculture data. The extension service or legal experts associated with SAKS could provide a valuable service by working with these and other groups, adapting the
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From page 109... ...
If ownership protections require producers to jealously guard their individual data, broadening the value of individual data collection through regional aggregation for area-wide crop management research or recommendations will be retarded and made prohibitively expensive. Providers of information services, such as fertilizer dealers providing precision application services, generally recognize the land owner or farm manager as the de jure owner of data.
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From page 110... ...
Some farm organizations have asserted a right to create such collections, presumably to provide better information services to members and to develop regional strategies (American Farm Bureau Federation, 1995)
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From page 111... ...
As valuable as precision agriculture data may prove to be to individual landowners, much of the potential value of the huge amount of electronic data that could be collected by these technologies will not be realized unless the individual farm databases are consolidated into regional databases. These would not be averages or other statistical summaries of detailed data, but massive compilations of the detailed data itself, without information identifying individual farms from which the data are collected.
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From page 112... ...
Public agencies may not have the organization, knowledge, or resources to develop regional data sharing cooperatives that could allow effective use of such data. Two kinds of obstacles stand in the way of creating regional databases from farm and field microdata.
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From page 113... ...
While the current extent of precision agriculture adoption limits what can be accomplished, agencies need to carefully examine precision agriculture, both to ensure that the agencies are providing data useful to producers using precision methods, if that is appropriate, and to assess the potential for using data collected on the farm to supplement or replace existing data collection efforts. Finely detailed information about soil properties is fundamental to some types of precision agriculture.
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From page 116... ...
The orientation is toward the other end of the detail-resolution spectrum, providing data for resource and environmental applications across extensive areas. In their examination of aspects of NRCS data activities, a blue ribbon panel articulated similar recommendations for changes within NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1995~.
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From page 117... ...
As precision agriculture becomes more widely adopted, precision data could at first supplement, and perhaps later entirely supplant, more traditional data collection paradigms based on agency surveys. Federal agencies cannot immediately use precision agricultural data because the number of operators who have fully adopted precision agriculture and thus
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From page 118... ...
Encouraging developments from the Agriculture Electronics Association show, however, that there can be industry-wide cooperation on standards. Finally, the problems of data ownership, data privacy, and data sharing discussed above may limit producers' willingness to contribute data or to be bound by any standard.
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From page 119... ...
POTENTIAL FOR PRECISION AGRICULTURE The committee believes that precision agriculture offers new information technologies to address information needs for management of agricultural crops. Widespread adoption of precision agriculture technologies will constitute a new way to practice agriculture at ever finer spatial and temporal resolutions, and to improve use of information for crop management at all spatial scales.
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