Researchers finding out how precision farming practices are utilized in Arkansas

Researchers desirous to know the way Arkansas farmers, consultants and different professionals use precision agriculture have launched a survey to seek out the solutions.

The survey will stay open till Jan. 31.

“This survey will assist our staff establish analysis and academic wants and priorities for precision agriculture and soil testing in Arkansas,” stated Aurelie Poncet, assistant professor of precision agriculture for the College of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “We’ll use the collected info to outline a typical stakeholder imaginative and prescient for precision agriculture in Arkansas and establish a few of the challenges that have to be overcome to maximise advantages from expertise use, soil testing, and scouting.”

Precision agriculture seeks to make use of new applied sciences to extend crop yields and profitability whereas decreasing the degrees of conventional inputs wanted to develop crops (land, water, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides), in line with Sustainable America. Farmers using precision agriculture are utilizing much less to develop extra. GPS units on tractors, for example, enable farmers to plant crops in additional environment friendly patterns and proceed from level A to level B with extra precision, saving time and gasoline. Fields could be leveled by lasers, which suggests water could be utilized extra effectively and with much less farm effluent working off into native streams and rivers. The outcome generally is a boon for farmers and holds nice potential for making agriculture extra sustainable and growing meals availability, SA reported.

Dr. Aurelie Poncet needs to know the way Arkansas farmers are utilizing precision agriculture.

“My aim is to assist Arkansas producers improve farm profitability with precision agriculture,” she stated. “I’m significantly fascinated about creating internet instruments that ship data-driven suggestions confirmed to work below subject situations and tailor-made to the producers’ distinctive manufacturing targets, setting, and accessible assets.”

Working with Poncet are Don Johnson, professor within the Division of Agricultural Schooling, Communications and Expertise, and Nathan Slaton, assistant director of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and head of the division’s soil testing lab in Marianna.

Johnson stated “the outcomes of this examine will assist analysis and extension personnel goal their efforts to satisfy producers’ precedence wants within the space of precision agriculture.”

“The questions and feedback from growers and consultants are an integral a part of utilized analysis and extension applications,” Slaton stated. “A big proportion of analysis is stimulated by issues we turned conscious of from interactions with growers and consultants.”

Poncet stated the outcomes of the survey will probably be compiled by Fall 2023.

Poncet stated these answering the survey will probably be requested to supply their identify and e mail handle along with the everyday demographic questions comparable to farm dimension, county, age and years of expertise, however this info will solely be used to establish duplicate solutions. The information will probably be aggregated in a technique to defend the contributors’ identities.