Precision Agriculture For Small Scale Farming Systems.

The advent of precision agriculture that occurred in the US over two decades back involved application of advanced and innovative technologies. Precision agriculture (PA) in the US and other advanced countries continued in that direction and today it is more sophisticated and complex than before.  Interestingly, the concept of PA is relatively simple and does not mandate utilization of advanced technologies to practice it. For example, it may take a suite of auto-pilots or high resolution guidance system on a 1000 hectare farm in the US to practice PA or it may take a group of skilled labors/farmers to practice precision planting on a 0.5 hectare field in a small farm in India. While the scale of farming is certainly contrasting in the two scenarios, both scenarios involved and implemented right techniques to identify and manage spatial and temporal variability, and hence would fall under precision agricultural practices.

There are opportunities for practicing precision agriculture or shall we say "Smart Agriculture" techniques around the globe. The form of precision practices may be different from one place to another, depending upon creative mindset of farmers, practitioners, scientists and consultants local to the area of interest. This paper will present the broad concept of precision agriculture with several examples of PA practices from several countries, where farmers and practitioners have overcome the challenges and converted them into opportunities by harnessing the global information and developing local precision techniques suitable for their region, operation and resources.