World population is poised to expand to 8.3 billion by 2030. An extra one billion tonnes of cereals will be needed by that time – in comparison to total 2011 world production of 2.3 billion tonnes. Water systems are currently under stress from numerous factors and urbanization is depleting the presence of the most productive lands suitable for agriculture. Geospatial technologies have a role to play through contributing toward an increase in the level of food production, and that role is multi-disciplinary.
World population is poised to expand to 8.3 billion by 2030. An extra one billion tonnes of cereals will be needed by that time – in comparison to total 2011 world production of 2.3 billion tonnes. Water systems are currently under stress from numerous factors and urbanization is depleting the presence of the most productive lands suitable for agriculture. Geospatial technologies have a role to play through contributing toward an increase in the level of food production, and that role is multi-disciplinary.
Geospatial technologies have important roles to play when it comes to increasing food production. They are not limited to one individual country, but can be applied to all areas of agriculture where food production takes place.
Mapping and documentation form the foundation for many agricultural producers worldwide. Since efficient land administration systems tend to be privately owned, there are great incentives for producers who deploy the latest available technologies that assist to conserve landscape resources while improving average yields.
Geospatial tools and technologies tend to have higher rates of return on investment because they include consideration of growth factors into the workflows and decision making leading toward higher production. Knowing available soil moisture, levels of weed infestation, seed rates, fertilizer requirements and other production factors across varying terrain means improved management.
But the production of food can be complicated by many factors. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says that most people will be fed by 2030 in it’s 2010 Annual Report. However, as The Australia newspaper in it’s National Affairs column points out, getting from Point A to Point B may be a little trickier than we acknowledge. And, in some cases, governments have really made it difficult for agricultural producers to get on side with climate change initiatives – complicating the messages with an overdose of confusing messages.
Increasingly we see the human dimension and the technology dimensions coming together. Policy is part of agricultural considerations. Consider for a moment the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union whose total EU budget exceeds 30% yearly of the €141 Billion roughly. Within the EU agriculture relates closely to the INSPIRE Directive, due to it’s dependence upon topographic data, satellite imagery, water management technologies etc. – all heavily connected to geospatial initiatives.
In my view, the European Union, through it’s decreasing capitalization of CAP (now down to 34% of total budget) is soon going to force independent producers to become more production oriented, as subsidization rapidly decreases. In fact, the current worldwide economic situation is tending to place greater pressure on the shift from public to private agricultural ventures.
GNSS tehcnologies have long been able to provide the technologies for precision farming aspects that locate positions in the field. Tractors, tillage, seeding and other equipment now regularly traverse fields using these technologies. But the greater transition about to happen, I think, will involve improved availability of airborne / satellite imagery, thereby effectively filling in another piece of the precision farming equation.
While this aerial imagery has long been available, it has not been there to the degree that agricultural producers would want it. Crops grow at different times in different places, and critical growth stages cause producers to make decisions – requiring suitable imagery for those periods. New developments in satellite imagery that allow more producers and independent producers to begin using satellite and airborne imagery are upon us. Groups of producers will be looking for services, and many of them will hire or employ the use of professionals to interpret these data and communicate with them – and most of those people will necessarily live near the producers as trusted sources of production information.
In addition, UAVs and robotics are similarly poised to provide an increasing amount of spatial data to decision making food producers. They will wander and roam the fields of the planet, collecting and sending data to distant computers for processing. But field notebooks will become more, not less important, since a lot of this information will need to be verified in-the-field and communicated.
Agriculture is about to undergo a remarkable change as the power of cloud computing links to distant field technologies. Satellite and airborne imagery will fill in many of the precision farming blanks, with more frequently available data, often offered up through new business models for delivery – and use. One will sell a lot more imagery from the field, as compared to an office in Frankfurt, London, New York or some other city.
Over-riding all future geospatial technology decision making is a key realisation – feeding the world is going to be much more demanding and require highly efficient technology in the days ahead.
