Precision Ag Conference Marks 10th Year, Expects 275-Plus Papers

Precision ag - with all the GPS guidance, yield monitors and variable-rate application methods - was still considered a fairly novel idea 10 years ago when promoters launched the first International Conference On Precision Agriculture (ICPA).

This year, the conference hits that decade mark, and it has grown into a full-blown scientific and commercial event. More than 275 research papers will be delivered during the 4-day event, which starts July 18 in Denver Colorado.

Among the sponsors are two entities with common interests from completely different parts of the world – the Alabama Precision Agriculture Extension group, and the Precision Agriculture Research Chair at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia.

"The Alabama group wishes to support precision agriculture education and research, and the Saudi research center is trying to gather as much information as possible to help them get a center started, and begin supporting work on precision agriculture in Saudi Arabia,” says Raj Khosla, conference coordinator.

Khosla has traveled thousands of miles this year, in large part to garner international support for the event, according to an ICPA press release. In particular, there are two issues he sees great interest in from his contacts. The first is food security.

“People are talking about food security, and there is the desire to understand what role precision agriculture plays in this,” says Khosla. “Recently, the journal Science dedicated an entire issue on food security, and in that issue they had a six-page article on precision ag. Precision is here to stay and is part of the solution.

As for specific technology, there is worldwide interest in active sensing. “In other parts of the world, active sensing as a tool to manage nitrogen becoming a big issue, with emphasis on nitrogen efficiency,” says Khosla. Nitrogen use efficiency is seen as a way to influence climate change in a positive way.