Agronomics image

Precision farming involves the use of GPS, sensing and control technologies to use spatial data to manage soils, crops and livestock. 

See the National Centre for Precision Agriculture and International Society of Precision Agriculture

Major precision farming businesses in the UK include SOYL, Soil Essentials, Precision Decisions.

 

Share and connect useful organisations, inititiatives and resources related to precision farming via this page.

 

Related Organisations

Content below is from across the PEP community and is not necessarily endorsed by Stewards or by PEP

Connected Content

Agriculture now generates vast amounts of data of different types and at different scales. The ownership, access, control, sharing, value, permissioning, intergration, security, safeguarding and sovereignty of this data represent multiple challenges and opportunities for the sector.

The use of robotics is rapidly developing in agriculture, with large and small autonomous vehicles becoming commercially available.

Agri-TechE is a business focused member organisation, supporting the growth of a world-leading network of innovative farmers, producers, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs who share a vision of increasing the productivity, profitability and sustainability of agriculture.

The standard way to measure and monitor soils has been through soils samples taken to 15-30cm in representative W patterns. A range of technologies are now available commercially and in development to provide higher resolution data across a wider range of metrics. This page provides a space to share and discuss the available and coming tools, services and technologies.

Agronomics is the science of understanding the variation in the cropped environment, identifying the management practices and system designs that work. It uses a farm centric approach of shared farm data and on-farm experimentation.

The agri-tech sector is vibrant and growing, with many exciting companies, organisations and networks are working to develop agri-tech solutions.

On Farm Experimentation (OFE) is increasingly being recognised as having transformative power in improving performance in agricultural systems across the world.

Innovation for Agriculture (IfA) is an independent knowledge exchange charity that aims to bridge the gap between science and practice. 

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, are being increasingly used in agriculture to improve farming efficiency and productivity.

Paper in Agronomy, 2021 by Jason B. Cho, Joseph Guinness Tulsi Kharel, Ángel Maresma, Karl J

Pioneering innovation, technology and precision engineering for UK farming. 

The development of Farm-PEP Performance Enhancement Partnerships to support on-farm knowledge generation through shared ideas, data and experimentation. Funded as part of Farming Innovation Pathways programme from Defra and Innovate UK Transforming Food Production.

A range of digital technologies promise to transform agriculture, including sensing, robotics, artificial intelligence, wireless networks & IoT, big data, decision support tools, modelling, digital twins and precision farming. 

Many technologies now exist to monitor land at a range from scales, from hand-held sensors and simple cameras, through tractor mounted sensors, drones, aeroplanes through to satellites.

Arable crops in the UK make up just under half of the farmed area (3.9M ha out of 9M ha)

The INNO-VEG project aims to increase the speed and uptake of innovation in the field vegetable and potato sectors by: Defining and implementing a new approach for delivering cost-effective research. Establishing a cross border innovation network which will create the framework conditions for innovation to facilitate uptake of the new approach.

As the population grows, so do our demands on the planet. Managing this resource has never been so important. Since it was founded in 1901, Harper has been designed to meet this challenge. Set on a 494 hectare farm, we are the leading specialist university tackling the future development of our planet's food production, processing, animal sciences, engineering, land management and sustainable business.

Precision farming software and services integrating layers of data.

ipaast-czo: Interoperable Precision Agricultural and Archaeological Sensing Technologies Remote and near-surface sensing technologies such as satellite imaging, UAV imaging, and geophysical survey are used in the practice of precision agriculture to support farmers and land managers to make data-driven management decisions. Archaeologists use many of these same sensing technologies to investigate the buried evidence for past human activities and make this evidence for the heritage of agricultural landscapes visible. Fundamentally, practitioners and researchers in both precision agriculture and archaeology are invested in developing a better understanding of soil conditions and their impacts on plant development by using advanced sensing technologies and related analytical methods. Consequently, there is a vast, untapped potential for sharing data and analytical approaches, enabling new research in both domains at an unprecedented scale and level of detail, leading to enhanced interpretations of the character of the agricultural landscape.    

As pioneers in UK precision farming since 1993 we know the difference between sustainable improvements to crop production and the latest trends. Our early commitment to the principle of applying inputs at the right rate and in the right place led the way for 20 years of scientific innovation. Today, SOYL still leads the way and our commercial services are backed by the UK’s largest precision farming specific research and development programme.

Enviresearch exists to provide the best regulatory and risk assessment service in Europe for the global chemical industry.

Guidance from ADAS Agronomics on how best to conduct Line Trials on farm.  

Precision farming company with 20 years experience, based in Scotland but active across the UK. 

After four years acting as a 3rd party distributor of various software and hardware, and a highly experienced training school, In 2019, frustrated with existing drone-based, crop monitoring methods, they decided to develop their own smartphone app called "Skippy Scout".

Hybrid conference held in Montpellier in October 2021 exploring Farmer Centric On-Farm Experimentation.  

Final report from the Automating Nitrogen Defra LINK project 2010-2015 with AHDB, ADAS, AgLeader,

Useful advice leaflet from Scotland's Farm Advice Service on drones/UAVs and their application in

Scientific paper reviewing commercial solutions for mapping yield of horticultural crops:

Defra Sustainable Arable LINK project from 2010 to 2015 that aimed to produce an automated system using precision farming technologies for N management of cereals, but ended up changing the whole way we think about nitrogen, yields, experimentation, research, variation & knowledge.

AHDB project from 2014-2018 working with farmers to monitor and optimise their nitrogen fertiliser rates on-farm.  

Crop canopy sensing – your virtual farm walk?

Routine topsoil samples should be taken from all fields for analysis of pH, P, K and Mg every 3-5 years. Accurate information on soil nutrient Indices and soil pH is essential for nutrient management planning. Various approaches and services are now available for in field mapping of soil nutrient availability. 

Precision farming specialists

Machinery plays a pivotal role in modern agriculture, revolutionizing the way we cultivate crops and raise livestock. This technological advancement has significantly increased efficiency, productivity, and sustainability in the farming industry. Agricultural machinery encompasses a diverse range of equipment, from tractors and combines to specialized tools like seeders, plows, and irrigation systems.

Connect to farm software providers here, and share your experiences.

Small Robot Company is reimagining farming to make food production sustainable. Using robotics and artificial intelligence, we have created an entirely new model for ecologically harmonious, efficient and profitable farming. We call this Per Plant farming.

The business event showcasing low carbon practices, technology and energy solutions for a profitable & sustainable farming future.

Digital agriculture is no longer a trend, but has arrived on many fields & farms across the globe. SKYFLD supports you with planning and monitoring your crops, production of high-quality food with a focus on sustainability, and strengthening your ecological and economic balance sheet.

Scientific Paper by Rob Bramley, Simon Cook and colleagues in 'Agronomy for Sustainable Development' 2022.

Agro Mavens helps you and your business get talked about in the world of agriculture and agritech. A specialist marketing and communications agency for agriculture, from our base in the UK we work with agriculturally active brands all around the world, from multinationals to start-ups.

Profiling some of the exciting research, development, and commercially available technology in the region. Full Agenda below.

The INNO-VEG project is developing innovative methods for carrying out research into

As technology develops, there are more and more ways to access and assess farm data as well as involving other technologies to support your farming.

AHDB Project 2014-2017 - PF Hort - A Review of Precision Farming Techniques for Improved Soil and

Write whatever you want here - this is the main section. You can add links, add pictures and embed videos. To paste text from elsewhere use CTRL+Shift+V to paste without formatting. Add videos by selecting 'Full HTML' below, copying the 'embed html' from the source page (eg Youtube), clicking 'Source' above and pasting where you want the video to appear.
You can upload an image here. It can be jpg, jpeg, gif or png format.
Upload requirements

You can upload a file here, such as a pdf report, or MS Office documents, Excel spreadsheet or Powerpoint Slides.

Upload requirements
Authors Order
Add Authors here - you can only add them if they already exist on PEP. Just start writing their name then select to add it. To add multiple authors click the 'Add another item' button below.

Please ensure that you have proof-read your content. Pages are not edited further once submitted and will go live immediately.

Configure the meta tags below.

Use tokens to avoid redundant meta data and search engine penalization. For example, a 'keyword' value of "example" will be shown on all content using this configuration, whereas using the [node:field_keywords] automatically inserts the "keywords" values from the current entity (node, term, etc).

Browse available tokens.

Simple meta tags.

The text to display in the title bar of a visitor's web browser when they view this page. This meta tag may also be used as the title of the page when a visitor bookmarks or favorites this page, or as the page title in a search engine result. It is common to append '[site:name]' to the end of this, so the site's name is automatically added. It is recommended that the title is no greater than 55 - 65 characters long, including spaces.
A brief and concise summary of the page's content, preferably 150 characters or less. Where as the description meta tag may be used by search engines to display a snippet about the page in search results, the abstract tag may be used to archive a summary about the page. This meta tag is no longer supported by major search engines.

Meta tags that might not be needed by many sites.

Geo-spatial information in 'latitude; longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958; -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
Geo-spatial information in 'latitude, longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958, -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
Robots
A comma-separated list of keywords about the page. This meta tag is used as an indicator in Google News.
Highlight standout journalism on the web, especially for breaking news; used as an indicator in Google News. Warning: Don't abuse it, to be used a maximum of 7 times per calendar week!
This meta tag communicates with Google. There are currently two directives supported: 'nositelinkssearchbox' to not to show the sitelinks search box, and 'notranslate' to ask Google not to offer a translation of the page. Both options may be added, just separate them with a comma. See meta tags that Google understands for further details.
Used to rate content for audience appropriateness. This tag has little known influence on search engine rankings, but can be used by browsers, browser extensions, and apps. The most common options are general, mature, restricted, 14 years, safe for kids. If you follow the RTA Documentation you should enter RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA
Indicate to search engines and other page scrapers whether or not links should be followed. See the W3C specifications for further details.
Tell search engines when to index the page again. Very few search engines support this tag, it is more useful to use an XML Sitemap file.
Control when the browser's internal cache of the current page should expire. The date must to be an RFC-1123-compliant date string that is represented in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), e.g. 'Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:12:56 GMT'. Set to '0' to stop the page being cached entirely.

The Open Graph meta tags are used to control how Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other social networking sites interpret the site's content.

The Facebook Sharing Debugger lets you preview how your content will look when it's shared to Facebook and debug any issues with your Open Graph tags.

The URL of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Should not be used if og:image:url is used. Note: if multiple images are added many services (e.g. Facebook) will default to the largest image, not specifically the first one. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The URL of an video which should represent the content. For best results use a source that is at least 1200 x 630 pixels in size, but at least 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum. Object types supported include video.episode, video.movie, video.other, and video.tv_show. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically.
A alternative version of og:image and has exactly the same requirements; only one needs to be used. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The secure URL (HTTPS) of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly. Any URLs which start with "http://" will be converted to "https://".
The type of image referenced above. Should be either 'image/gif' for a GIF image, 'image/jpeg' for a JPG/JPEG image, or 'image/png' for a PNG image. Note: there should be one value for each image, and having more than there are images may cause problems.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format. Can be the same as the 'Article modification date' tag.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
The date this content will expire, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.

A set of meta tags specially for controlling the summaries displayed when content is shared on Twitter.

Notes:
  • no other fields are required for a Summary card
  • Photo card requires the 'image' field
  • Media player card requires the 'title', 'description', 'media player URL', 'media player width', 'media player height' and 'image' fields,
  • Summary Card with Large Image card requires the 'Summary' field and the 'image' field,
  • Gallery Card requires all the 'Gallery Image' fields,
  • App Card requires the 'iPhone app ID' field, the 'iPad app ID' field and the 'Google Play app ID' field,
  • Product Card requires the 'description' field, the 'image' field, the 'Label 1' field, the 'Data 1' field, the 'Label 2' field and the 'Data 2' field.
A description that concisely summarizes the content of the page, as appropriate for presentation within a Tweet. Do not re-use the title text as the description, or use this field to describe the general services provided by the website. The string will be truncated, by Twitter, at the word to 200 characters.
By default Twitter tracks visitors when a tweet is embedded on a page using the official APIs. Setting this to 'on' will stop Twitter from tracking visitors.
The URL to a unique image representing the content of the page. Do not use a generic image such as your website logo, author photo, or other image that spans multiple pages. Images larger than 120x120px will be resized and cropped square based on longest dimension. Images smaller than 60x60px will not be shown. If the 'type' is set to Photo then the image must be at least 280x150px. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The MIME type for the media contained in the stream URL, as defined by RFC 4337.