PAGrid: Precision Agriculture Sensor Grid System

Introduction and Motivation

Precision Agriculture (PA) technology has recently emerged to exploit the spatial and temporal variability of soil and crop factors between and within fields. This new approach benefits from the emergence and convergence of several technologies, including Global Positioning System (GPS), Geographic Information System (GIS), miniaturized computer components, automatic control, in-field and remote sensing, mobile computing, advanced information processing, and telecommunications. Agricultural industry is now capable of acquiring detailed knowledge on production variability spatially and timely and automatically adjusting treatments to meet each site's unique needs. The proposed research further propels research and management of precision agriculture projects leveraging emerging technologies: sensor networks, grid computing, autonomic computing, and coordinated mobile robots.

Precision agriculture has been further extended to livestock production, namely precision ranching. Oklahoma beef cattle is ranked fourth nationally having a production value of $1.95 billion and a total worth of $3.7 billion among the other states' beef industries. Stocker, cow-calf, and feed yard operations all have great potential to effectively implement these technologies. For example, the Oklahoma stocker industry is comprised mainly of winter/spring and summer/fall grazing periods. Wheat and other small grains are primarily grazed in winter/spring. An estimated 1.9 million head of stockers were grazed in the winter/spring for 2004. Using the advanced technology to manage stocker health and prevention, along with decreasing the need for labor and time consuming tasks, the 6% for labor, death and vet/med is estimated for a reduction of 3%. For a 3% savings, at an animal purchase price of $600, there is a savings of around $22.50 per head. Added growth performance and increased profits are also likely. The proposed technologies have the ability to prevent weight loss by detecting animal sickness earlier, thus providing an earlier window for corrective action. Decisions made from incomplete or poor mid-season information effects grain losses due to grazing. Our proposed research and systems under the PAGrid framework provides a tool to harness such information. For the entire Oklahoma stocker industry we estimate potential annual savings can be between $60 and $90 million dollars. There are many more opportunities for savings and profit increases in cow-calf and feed yard operations with this technology.