Precision agriculture technologies - relevance and application to sugarcane production

Abstract

The development of a range of new technologies has brought agriculture and associated equipment to a new level of sophistication. The Australian sugar industry is facing a long term trend of reducing value of production and increasing input costs. The industry has rapidly adopted GPS based guidance technology with many cane growers now having access to high precision GPS technologies. However, there remains a wide range of uncertainties and conflicting opinions that make the next step for precision agriculture (PA) a daunting prospect for cane growers, therefore the adoption of PA has been slow. A recently completed project (Davis et al, 2007) reviewed published and unpublished information on precision agriculture technologies that are being applied or could be applied to sugarcane production and harvesting both in Australia and internationally. This paper summarises the application and opportunities for PA in the Australian Sugar Industry. It describes how PA technologies can be integrated into a management system that provides greater benefits to sugarcane production and harvesting.