German company RapidEye, the only geospatial solutions provider to own and operate a constellation of five identical Earth Observation satellites, announced today that over a period of just three months, 95% of the contiguous United States has been imaged. Almost 80% of this imagery was captured by the RapidEye satellites with less than ten percent cloud cover. The campaign, which … Read More
EU Investing in Precision Technology
To help growers in the UK adapt to changes in EU pesticide regulations, the British government is funding applied R&D on over 30 innovative projects, including precsion weed mapping. According to a report in Science Business, one of the projects that has won funding in this first tranche of grants, entitled ‘Automating weed mapping in arable fields for precision farming’ … Read More
North Dakota Precision Ag Expo Videos Worth Watching
Special coverage of two recent Precision Ag Expo days, in Casselton and Dickenson, N. Dak., has been documented by Farm & Ranch Guide–and the webpage includes educational videos of numerous presentations. Both field days were hosted by North Dakota State University Extension Service. You can learn about site specific hardware, history of GPS, GPS system choices, accuracy of GPS, LIDAR … Read More
Alabama Precision Ag Topics at International Conference
The Alabama Precision Agriculture Team is sponsoring and participating in the International Conference on Precision Agriculture to be held July 18-21, 2010 in Denver Colorado. Team members will present on various topics including Profitability of RTK and Its Influence on Peanut Production, Adoption and Use of Precision Agriculture Technologies and Proper Implementation of Precision Agricultural Technologies for Conducting On-farm Research. … Read More
Precision Agriculture Workshop in California
UC Davis has prepared a great all-day workshop on Site-Specific Management to help increase widespread adoption of this valuable tool. It will be held July 14 in the UC Davis conference center (the day before Weed Day). Here’s a look at the program: Workshop Goal: Present and discuss SSM concepts and applied research in order to provide the audience with … Read More
ARS Using Field Topography To Improve Fertilizer Use
Using an airplane with LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors is helping USDA-ARS researchers build better management zone maps that can accurately predict yields based on topography. With the maps fed into computerized, variable-rate fertilizer applicators, precision farmers can divert more of their costly fertilizer to the highest-yielding zones and the least to the lowest-yielding zones. They can also use … Read More
Precision Agriculture Blogging in Alabama
I have not met a grower involved in precision agriculture that doesn’t love, no crave, more information on the subject. To this end, check out the very good Precision Ag Blog, compiled and written by various extension pros in the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Recent blog posts talk about variable rate (VR) seeding, VR calibration, data management, data collection with … Read More
Test Your Corn Planting Populations
If you’re looking to experiment with corn planting populations yet this spring, check out a very good paper on plant population compiled by South Dakota State University researchers Gregg Carlson, Paul Gaspar and David Clay. Many agronomists and producers conduct experiments that test the impact of rates of fertilizer, population, or pesticide on yield. To analyze this data we need … Read More
The Virtues of High Precision
During the recent Galileo Appreciation Days held in Brussels, the high degree of accuracy and precision that’s possible with EGNOS, Galileo and other GNSS technologies were celebrated, as reported by the European GNSS Supervisory Authority. “EGNOS is already a success story in the agricultural sector,” said Aguilera. “It already has 50% market share, which is expected to reach 70% by … Read More
Precision Podcast from Commodity Classic
Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) Director of Research Tracy Blackmer was one of the presenters for the PrecisonAg Learning Center at the 2010 Commodity Classic trade show. Tracy is head of ISA’s On-Farm Network®, which focuses on precision agriculture tools and technology to collect information that can increase growers’ profits from crop production and I interviewed him at Classic for this … Read More