Precise positioning in the Agricultural sector (2013)

Wheat (12 per cent) is the next most important product after cattle. More than 87 per cent of grains farmers use some form of precision agriculture, including 79 per cent who use 10 cm accuracy GNSS positioning services. Productivity improvements are estimated to range between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of production costs. More precise positioning to 2 cm accuracy offers economic benefits in some other agricultural sectors:

• Cotton, where a large majority of growers already use positioning and are set up to take advantage of greater precision, realising increased savings from application of pesticides and fertiliser.
• Grape growing, where high precision can improve vine canopy management and harvesting. However, because the industry has had limited adoption to date benefits will require new investment and thus take longer to realise. Extension of 2 cm accuracy augmentation signals would support greater adoption.

Barriers to achieving high levels of adoption outside of grains and cotton include:

• In cattle, costs associated with electronic tagging of beasts well exceed benefits potentially realisable from positioning.
• In dairy, adjustment pressures have limited farmers’ ability to invest in tracking equipment. There is also crowding out of investment by the changes being pursued through the “future dairy” initiative.
• In grape growing, scepticism about the benefits of positioning.
• In horticulture, the small scale and dispersed nature of many of the businesses involved.

In the latter two cases, encouragement of early adopters and documentation of the financial benefits is likely to lead to a similar “S-curve” adoption pattern as that seen in grains over recent years. As well as economic benefits there are environmental benefits to the use of precise positioning in agriculture including:

• more efficient water use
• reduced runoff of farm chemicals into the environment
• better management of disease outbreaks