Precision Agriculture
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Precision agriculture is a rapidly developing methodology heavily tied to proprietary standards across many manufacturers. This makes it difficult and frequently frustrating to develop complete PA systems that encompass yield monitoring and variable input rate technology. Software often lags the pace of hardware development and is ever changing. The result is that the various data file types created by georeferencing instrumentation are frequently incompatible among different brands of DGPS receivers/monitors and commercial GIS software. The work at the Agricultural Research Center—Hays is intended to develop an understanding of the component interface requirements and interactions and to document ways to make them work in concert without introducing undue complexity. In so doing, it is intended that others might be able to capitalize on this technology without having to invest the effort to make diverse components function in a systems context.
Besides helping producers implement this technology, the ultimate goals include:
- expanding the capability of researchers to conduct replicated, commercial-scale, on-farm research to fine-tune and validate small plot research results in a manner that does not unduly burden the producer with complex record keeping and farming operations; and
- to develop efficient and accurate methods to document farming practices to demonstrate compliance with programs and regulations.
Farmers have access to several government and commercials sources for Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) corrections to achieve desired accuracy requirements for their precision agriculture activities. Some farmers have asked us: “Does the source matter?” To provide an answer, the Agricultural Research Center-Hays conducted a comparison of three DGPS correction sources (Coast Guard Beacon, FAA WAAS, and OmniSTAR) in both static and dynamic modes.
DGPS Static and Dynamic Study.pdf
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