Kentucky producers are faced with the challenge of farming highly variable land. Historical erosion has redistributed topsoil in many locations. This redistribution coupled with more than a century of animal-based agriculture and the increased size of field machinery has resulted in significant within-field variation of soil fertility levels, moisture holding capacity, and structure.
Precision agriculture involves the recognition of the variability that exists within agricultural production units, and the adjustment of inputs in accordance with this variation to optimize economic yield.
Our philosophy is:
Technology (yield monitoring capabilities) will allow producers to conduct on-farm research. An important role of research and education programs will be to guide producers in conducting on-farm research, drawing meaningful conclusions from the results, and disseminating this information to other producers.
Variable-rate technology (seed, fertilizer and chemicals) will allow Kentucky producers to optimize grain production. Another role of research and education institutions will be to develop and verify the economics of variable-rate practices. This may require additional development and application of crop growth models on a site-specific basis (with fine-tuning on a farm by farm basis).
Education of producers and training of personnel to enter the workforce will continue to be a focus of the College of Agriculture's efforts. Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, in conjunction with Agronomy and Agricultural Economics, offered one of the first courses in the U.S. on Precision Agriculture (Fall 1996). We seek to continually address the changing needs of Kentucky Agriculture.
