(2)ISA-UL, INESC TEC - CRIIS
What is the potential of Precision Agriculture (PA) for a sustainable future? How are PA´s objectives aligned with organisations and public policies? What is needed to leverage AP? These are some of the questions that this article aimes to address.
According to the International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA), PA “is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyses temporal, individual and spatial data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability to improve efficiency in the use of resources, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production”.
This definition focuses on the essentials of the processes of using data to improve decision making. But obviously, the implementation of the concept encompasses the use of technology, more or less advanced, in its different phases: observation and recording; analysis; differentiated decision; and finally, the materialisation of the decision on the ground. Some examples of technology are multi-spectral images of crops (obtained by drone, satellite or terrestrial platforms), soil electrical conductivity sensors, or soil water sensors, productivity monitoring, the Internet of Things (IoT), geographic information systems (GIS), satellite positioning systems (e.g., GPS), variable rate technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications, among others.
The ultimate objective of improving decision making is the application of inputs in the correct amount, in the correct place and at the correct time (3 R’s – Right Time, Right Place, Right Amount) depending on the production objective, and also considering the economic constraint inherent to any business. If this objective is achieved, that is, the optimisation of the use of inputs, then the convening between the needs of the crops and the availability of the different inputs, whether water or nutrients, will be ideal in each condition. As a result, not only obvious agronomic gains are achieved, but also cost reduction (once a certain production scale is achieved). Environmental gains are also fundamental, as it avoids inappropriate applications of inputs with greater polluting potential, such as nitrogen or phytopharmaceutical products.
This new production paradigm meets the challenges of the agricultural sector listed on the Innovation Agenda for Agriculture 2020-2030 (Terra Futura) to produce better (in quantity and quality) with fewer resources, in line with the sustainable use of natural resources and the adaptation to climate change scenarios. These challenges and their context are reflected in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) guidelines for the period 2020-2030 (Agenda 2030) and in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).
Specifically, the “European Ecological Pact” refers to PA as a mechanism for implementing its “Farm to Fork” strategy, which must be guaranteed in the national strategic plans for agriculture. PA has a proactive role in supporting the strategic implementation of the SDG’s. By promoting more efficient agronomic decisions and practices, PA is in line with SDG2, SDG12, SDG13 and SDG15 objectives, namely by contributing to ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, help to maintain ecosystems, strengthen the capacity to adapt to climate change, extreme weather conditions (e.g., droughts) and progressively improve the quality of the land and soil. PA promotes inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, especially for young people, and decent work for all, as referred to in SDG8. The implementation of PA to be efficient requires an “innovation ecosystem” (according to the editorial) that promotes scientific research and technological development, making PA also aligned with SDG9.
However, PA requires innovative technologies and systems for its full realisation, many of which were not specifically developed for agriculture. Moreover, the industry's capacity to put technological solutions on the market is much higher than the capacity of producers to learn them and assimilate them into their cropping system, or of researchers to develop practical and agronomically useful solutions. In this context, PA is still a marginal reality in Portuguese agriculture, as only 0.3% (5% in terms of arable land) of agricultural companies have adopted some type of technology. These figures contrast with the agriculture of North and South American countries or Australia, where PA technologies are present in more than 30% of agricultural companies.
This gap between the adoption of the PA by Portuguese companies concerning some foreign counterparts can only be mitigated by an effective liaison between the actors of the "innovation ecosystem" necessary for the implementation of PA: "end users", "technological companies" and " scientific system” (in addition to crop input companies, production organisations, among others). Currently, PA in Portugal has a great opportunity to boost the establishment of this “innovation ecosystem” through, for example, the national strategy for smart specialisation (ENEI) and collaborative laboratories (CoLAB) with recognition of the mutual benefits of work in efficient partnerships of PA's “multi-actors”, the co-design of technological development, service creation and training.
The full adoption of the AP will tend to value the core competencies of primary production engineering through the integration of differentiating agronomic knowledge valued in technological markets into dense value chains, which will require trained human resources to operate in the different vertices of the triangle of “innovation ecosystem” of PA, with predictable social value, within the framework of the challenges of sustainable development.
The challenges facing the agricultural sector over the next 30 years are significant. We believe that PA will make a decisive contribution to the development of solutions that are necessarily sustainable in all their dimensions.