Farming is a challenging business. Managing uncontrollable variables like weather and markets, addressing changing pest and disease pressure, and running a complex business can make farming difficult. Add in the impacts of a changing climate and the pressure to feed a growing world, and at times, the challenges can feel insurmountable.
It’s no wonder that farmers are turning to precise tools to help them grow their yields, lower input costs, and farm in a sustainable way. In fact, the precision ag industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.6% between 2023 and 2030. Precise agricultural data fuels key tools to increase yields, spend less, and lower carbon footprint at the farm level.
Increasing Yields with Precise Agricultural Data
Precision agriculture enables farmers to make informed decisions about crop management by gathering and analyzing data related to soil moisture, nutrient levels, and crop growth. By using this data to make adjustments to their management practices, farmers can optimize yields and increase their profitability. These benefits are driving precision agriculture data usage.
Precision agriculture technologies like sensors and drones can provide farmers with real-time data about their fields. This data can be used to monitor crop growth, detect early signs of pest or disease pressure, and adjust irrigation and fertilizer applications as needed.
Precision agriculture tools like Digital Crop Advisor allow farmers to collaborate with agronomists to optimize their crop management practices. This software provides real-time data and recommendations based on factors like soil and weather conditions, helping farmers make informed decisions about their crop management strategies. By working with agronomists and utilizing these tools, farmers can further optimize their yields and reduce their environmental impact.
Spending Less with Precise Agricultural Data
Precision agriculture can help farmers reduce expenses by only applying inputs exactly where they are needed and reducing overlap. Precise data can be used to optimize the use of resources, such as fertilizers, which have improved placement efficiency by an estimated 7% with the potential to further improve an additional 14%.
Precise data from on-farm experiments can help farmers minimize risk and dollars spent on unproven products and production practices. Overall, in several studies, precision agriculture technologies have proven savings through variable rate planting, precise nitrogen application, and enhanced pest management.
Reducing Carbon Footprint in Agriculture with Precise Agricultural Data
How much CO2 is produced from agriculture?
Carbon footprint in agriculture is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with estimates suggesting that agriculture contributes 10-12% of global GHG emissions. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world’s livestock industry alone produces more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. Therefore, it’s essential to lower the carbon footprint in agriculture to mitigate climate change.
How is carbon footprint calculated in agriculture?
To calculate the carbon footprint in agriculture, different methods can be used, for example as part of a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. LCA is a comprehensive method that considers all GHG emissions produced throughout the entire agricultural production cycle, including fertilizer production, land-use change, transportation, and the use of inputs such as pesticides and herbicides. By using this approach, various stakeholders, including researchers and farmers, can identify the primary sources of GHG emissions in a farming system, and take necessary steps to reduce them.
Precision agriculture can play a significant role in reducing the carbon footprint in agriculture. By using precise data and technology, farmers can optimize their input use, reduce waste, and improve crop yields while minimizing GHG emissions. Precision agriculture helps farmers adopt more sustainable practices, such as reducing tillage, optimizing fertilizer and pesticide application, and improving irrigation efficiency.
For instance, precise data has enabled farmers to reduce herbicide use by an estimated 9%, with the potential to further decrease it by 15% at full adoption. Such practices can significantly reduce carbon footprint in agriculture while also improving farmers’ profitability and sustainability.
Agmatix’s Digital Crop Advisor tool includes a fertilizer carbon footprint optimizer that helps agronomists and decision-makers on the farm compare nutrition plans and understand tradeoffs between yield and environmental impact. The tool even has an understanding of fertilizer production carbon footprint and takes this into account when providing recommendations.
By incorporating these tools and technologies, farmers can reduce their Scope 3 emissions in agriculture, including emissions from fertilizer and pesticide production, transportation, and waste disposal. Therefore, precision agriculture is a crucial tool that can help farmers reduce their carbon footprint while improving their productivity and profitability.
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Agmatix Supports Precise Data
As a global agro-informatics company, Agmatix understands the importance of precise data for positioning farmers to produce more, earn more, and protect the environment. Agmatix’s suite of on-cloud, next generation solutions support data generation, fast utilization, and data sharing to enable collaboration and ultimately speed to market.
The Digital Crop Advisor solution supports growers in calculating and reducing carbon footprint in agriculture through data-driven decision-making. Agronomics can leverage site-specific data to make customized nutrient recommendations designed for lowering Scope 3 emissions in agriculture.
Through the utilization of Digital Crop Advisor, crop yields can be maximized and sustainability KPIs can be quantified. Leveraging tools like Digital Crop Advisor in agriculture supports an understanding of how much CO2 is produced from a given set of nutrition protocols. Digital Crop Advisor can also support an understanding of fertilizer production carbon footprint, and the system recommends the most sustainable options and alternatives.
Digital Crop Advisor supports real-time decision-making in over 150 crops using 12 crop nutrient data profiles. Reporting and analysis of data are early, enabling even global teams to review and make decisions together. The decision support system enables agronomists to be confident in supplying growers with actionable, sustainable nutrition plans that work towards lowering agriculture’s carbon footprint.
The Agmatix platform is supported by a foundation engine that enables data to reach its full potential. Axiom is an ontology-based engine that ingests data from field trials, legacy data, IoT sensors, and other sources. It validates the data, serving as a quality gate and a standardizing step. Then, the data can be enriched with other datasets and transformed or harmonized for maximum use. Using data science and AI, Axiom unlocks field-level decisions and maximum data-driven sustainability. Axiom defines precise agricultural data!
Agmatix provides cloud-based solutions that work in diverse ways to support the use of data to increase yields, lower costs, and reduce scope 3 emissions in agriculture. These technologies are advanced, next-generation technologies that support everything from calculating and reducing carbon footprint to increasing speed to market and harmonizing data to support its use across the production system. Through precise agriculture data, a brighter future is possible.
