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Rolla, ND | I think you make a real key point. Precision agriculture really is not something a guy does well in an office just playing with a computer. It still takes hands on ground truthing to make the information most useful. There is some usefulness in just working in the office but that makes a fair amount of mistakes. Sometimes though if you just have knowledge of the field, you avoid them without a separate trip.
For instance you might know that a particular area that shows a lot of growth is where the salinity hurt the crop and a kochia patch takes over some years. By not just blindly following one parameter, you correct that spot from mixing it in a highly productive zone to one that highly produces weeds.
Most damaging of course would be sending out a mindless soil tester, who would then mix the high growth zones together, and the high salt zone with the kochia growth would almost certainly show high nitrates which could cause big problems if you followed an application recommendation based on the salty ground for the highest productive non saline ground in your field.
If people are taking a satellite shot and then just turning that into a magic map and handing it to you. That's really not precision agriculture, and I would have to say an abuse of satellite imagery. I've never heard those providing satellite imagery to promote using it that way. (mindlessly)
If you have someone using that way, I would question is he rightly could be called an agricultural consultant, maybe salesman would be the most generous name one could use. I'm sure there are less generous names too that could apply. | |
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FSA Image file question
