Precision agriculture in Australia: present status and recent developments

Abstract

A brief account of the present status of Precision Agriculture (PA) in Australia is presented, and areas of opportunity in the grains, sugar and wine industries are identified. In particular, these relate to the use of spatially-distributed experimentation to fine-tune management so as to achieve production efficiencies, reduced risk of environmental impact and enhanced food security, and the management of crop quality through selective harvesting and product streaming. The latter may be an important avenue by which farmers can take a more active role in the off-farm part of agricultural value chains. The important role of grower groups in facilitating PA adoption is also discussed. AGRICULTURA DE PRECISÃO NA AUSTRÁLIA: SITUAÇAO CORRENTE E DESENVOLVIMENTOS RECENTESRESUMO: Apresentamos um breve relato da situação atual da Agricultura de Precisão (AP) na Austrália, e identificamos as principais áreas de oportunidade para as indústrias de cereais, da canade--açúcar, e da uva e do vinho. Especificamente, estas oportunidades envolvem o uso de experimentação espacialmente distribuída para melhoramento da gestão agrícola com os múltiplos objetivos de aumento da eficiência de produção, redução do risco de impacto ambiental, contribuição para a segurança alimentar, e gestão de qualidade através da colheita seletiva e da diferenciação de produtos. Esta última poderá ser uma importante via pela qual os agricultores passem a ter um papel mais ativo nas cadeias de valor agrícola pós-exploração. Também discutimos o papel-chave desempenhado pelos grupos de agricultores no processo de adopção da AP. BACKGROUND

Protected agriculture, precision agriculture, and vertical farming: Brief reviews of issues in the literature focusing on the developing region in Asia

“…Adoption trends around the world The adoptions of precision-agriculture technologies have, so far, mostly been limited to parts of developed countries. In Australia, by 2013, 90 percent of farmers had been using some type of precision agriculture, and 20 percent of farmers had been using yield mapping and variable rate fertilizer application (Bramley and Trengove 2013). In Germany, about 10 ~ 30 percent of farmers were using some form of precision agriculture in 2016 (Paustian and Theuvsen 2017 -cited in Taylor 2018).…”

Enhanced nitrogen fertiliser technologies support the ‘4R' concept to optimise crop production and minimise environmental losses

“…For example, summaries of national and regional surveys of the broad-acre grain industry conducted from 2006 to 2009 in Australia showed that the adoption of variable-rate fertiliser technology (which included the use of crop sensor-based technologies) had increased from <5% estimated 6 years earlier to an average of 20%, ranging from 11% to 35% depending on the region (Robertson et al 2012). Issues affecting precision agriculture N technology adoption by the grain industry in Australia include the costs of the technologies, the relatively low rates of N application in some regions, an inability to accurately sense grain protein on the go (which hampers the development of accurate N budgets), equipment and software incompatibilities (Bramley and Trengrove 2013) and much larger variation (i.e. greater uncertainty) in the predictive performance of crop N and biomass sensing technologies in broad-acre paddocks compared with prediction capabilities observed previously in small-plot research (Perry et al 2012).…”

Broadcast distribution uniformity of fertilizer with centrifugal spreaders used in variable rate application

“…The distribution of soil correctives and fertilizes, in annual crops, through centrifugal spreaders is the most used method in field due to high operating capacity and wide range of doses (LAGHARI et al, 2014).However, it can have low distribution uniformity with high coefficients of variation (SERRANO et al, 2007;BAIO et al, 2012;BRAMLEY & TRENGOVE, 2013).…”