| Up in the sky, it’s
a bird! . . . It’s a plane! . . . No, it’s the solution
to a problem plaguing farmers worldwide who want to adopt precision
agriculture techniques!
Using aerial photographs taken from airplanes, those farmers can get
detailed overviews of their croplands to see which plants look healthy
and which don’t. But because of the size of the digital files
these photographs are stored in, until recently, the only way farmers
have been able to see the results is for the photos to be printed and
hand-delivered to them.
Now, what used to take days takes just minutes — another important
advancement in precision agriculture technology.
Johnie N. Jenkins is heading a team of Agricultural Research Service
scientists at Mississippi State University, in developing a high-speed
wireless networking system that will allow farmers to download aerial
images via the internet onto their personal computers, laptops, or even
better, their PDAs (personal digital assistant, or hand-held PC) in
a cost-effective and efficient way. Even though PDA screens are small,
farmers could scroll down the screen to see these images.
By using their PDAs, farmers could go out to their fields, download
the respective aerial images, and use Global Positioning System (GPS)
coordinates to quickly locate problem areas. This would allow them to
take care of whatever ails their crops just minutes after the aerial
images were taken. The wireless local area network can also be used
to download application maps directly to tractors or other machinery,
eliminating time-consuming steps and reducing the chance of human error.
For the past three years, Jenkins, a geneticist and research leader
for the ARS Genetics and Precision Agriculture Research Unit —
along with ARS technicians Kimber Gourley and Wendell Ladner —
has worked with the Paul Good Farm in Noxubee County, Mississippi, near
Macon. In a cooperative agreement, they have been evaluating the utility
of this emerging farming tool.
Jenkins’ team has tested various internet connections to see which
would make this system work best. Dial-up internet modem connections
are slow, making it impractical to download multi-megabyte aerial photography
files.
Digital subscriber lines, or DSL, are much faster than dial-up modems.
But since farmers must live within 5.4 km of a local central switching
system to use DSL, this service is also unusable by most of them.
According to Jenkins, farmers’ best option for high-speed downloads
of aerial cropland photos would be satellite internet access through
any of several service providers.
“It used to take two, maybe three days before these images were
useful to us,” says Jenkins of the hand-delivery method. “Now
we can have and use these images the same day — usually within
minutes of the plane landing.”
The technology is not cheap — the receiver box costs about $US500,
and subscription service is $US89.95 per month for small businesses.
But the benefits may be worth the costs.
“With these images, we can classify growth patterns, habitats,
and insects that cause crop damage,” says Jenkins. “It will
help decide where to spray and not to spray. There will be tremendous
savings on the cost of fertilisers and insecticides and that will help
the farmers’ bottom line.”
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