Traditional knowledge can enable precision farming

Lazarus Sauti

Margaret Oliver, a visiting fellow at the University of Reading’s Soil Research Centre in the United Kingdom believes local farming knowledge can be used instead of expensive technology.

Oliver said farmers in developing countries could take advantage of the emerging field of precision farming without needing the expensive technology usually associated with it.

The geostatistics expert noted, “Crop yields could be improved by applying traditional knowledge to mirror precision techniques such as using the satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) to analyse farm land.”

In a research paper, she said geostatistical analyses of data from sensors both on land and from satellites are ‘becoming increasingly standard for all kinds of crop production and will be of crucial importance in the near future as the world faces increasing issues of food security’.

Such data can be used to build a map of soil biochemistry, which can help farmers improve crop yields and resistance to disease.

Oliver also believes that local knowledge is of paramount importance in enhancing precision farming and noted that the first step towards combining traditional and precision farming is education.

“In the developing world, farming is more about knowledge, which is shared within the community, than expensive machinery.

“Farmers should therefore be helped to realise how much can be done by simply adjusting some of their usual practices, like watering or spreading manure on fields,” she said.

Oliver added, “Education on precision farming should be part of the aid programmes already in place, and cost would be minimal compared with expensive machinery.”

Precision farming refers to a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops.

Retooling small farmers in Africa in order to catch up on precision farming should therefore be the trend of the present.