In today’s modern era, GPS systems can be used for almost anything; car navigation, personal tracking, law enforcement, etc. But recently, scientists have discovered a way to use GPS systems to improve agriculture. It’s called precision agriculture, and it does just what the name implies. Using satellite imagery, farming specialists can get an aerial view of their massive fields, which can reveal a plethora of crucial information. Using this bird’s eye view of their land, they can find exactly where their crops aren’t growing, as well as where would be the best places to plant their crops.
This new use of GPS technology is growing fast, and slowly more and more farmers are adopting these new farming methods. This new technology can also save farmers tons of money, at least $1,300 dollars per year, by reducing the amount of crops they lose every year.
Scientists say that if 10% of farmers in the United States adopt this new method of farming, 16 million gallons of fuel will be saved per year, as well as 4 million pounds of pesticide and 2 million quarts of herbicide. Precision agriculture was invented around 15 years ago, back before the field of GPS satellite imagery was not fully developed yet. Today, now that GPS satellite images can be presented in crystal clear HD quality, precision agriculture has become much more mainstream.
As with all new technology, precision agriculture faces many obstacles ahead. First of all, many farmers don’t like having their farms photographed via satellite because they believe it will allow their competitors to spy on their fields. Another problem these developers face is sunspots. A sunspot a period when a small portion of the sun flares up, causing a break in all satellite and radio signals. Usually, sunspots are very rare, but unfortunately for these farmers, we are about to enter a year full of sunspot activity. High sunspot activity usually occurs in 11 year cycles, and the last high sunspot year was 2001, which means by the year 2012, this satellite imagery technology will be rendered almost absolutely obsolete for a full year.
The road ahead seems tough for precision agriculture, but if there is one thing that is absolute about technology, it is that it never stops progressing.
