Aspects of precision agriculture

Precision agriculture is the application of technologies and principles to manage spatial and temporal variability associated with all aspects of agricultural production for the purpose of improving crop performance and environmental quality. Success in precision agriculture is related to how well it can be applied to assess, manage, and evaluate the space-time continuum in crop production. This theme is used here to assess the current and potential capabilities of precision agriculture. Precision agriculture is technology enabled. It is through the integration of specific technologies that the potential is created to assess and manage variability at levels of detail never before obtainable and, when done correctly, at levels of quality never before achieved. The agronomic feasibility of precision agriculture has been intuitive, depending largely on the application of traditional management recommendations at finer scales, although new approaches are appearing. The agronomic success of precision agriculture has been limited and inconsistent although quite convincing in some cases, such as N management in sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.). Our analysis suggests prospects for current precision management increase as the degree of spatial dependence increases, but the degree of difficulty in achieving precision management increases with temporal variance. Thus, management parameters with high spatial dependence and low temporal variance (e.g., liming, P, and K) will be more easily managed precisely than those with large temporal variance (e.g., mobile insects). The potential for economic, environmental, and social benefits of precision agriculture is complex and largely unrealized because the space-time continuum of crop production has not been adequately addressed. © 1999 Academic Press Inc.