A new and cheaper method of analyzing soil and plant samples from various parts of the field is on the offering with the aid of space satellites by measuring electromagnetic radiation reflected from a chosen farm land.
Previously this was done in laboratories but it has been costly and often unavailable to many farmers. In laboratories soil and plant samples from various parts of the field are selected and analyzed.
“For farmers, working out the optimal amount of seed, fertilizer, pesticide and water to scatter on the field can make or break, the subsequent harvest,” says an agricultural expert.
“The spectrum of this radiation – which can be in the form of either natural sunlight or artificial radar – can reveal with great precision, the properties of the soil, the quality of crop being grown, and the levels of those crops of chlorophyll, various materials, moisture and other indicators of their quality,” he explains.
When recent data are included, detailed maps are produced indicating exactly how, where and when crops should be grown. The service costs is less than Ksh1,200 per hector for a handful of reading a year, and can increase yields by as much as 10 per cent.
This technological farming – using of satellites-based intelligence is young but growing very fast from its importance. Once a satellite for surveillance has been provided for a particular group of farmers or region, the respective farmers are afforded a map of their fields as they are divided into various zones per hectare through their e-mails. For each zone fertilizer formulae is recommended, height of some of the crops, when the rains are expected, an appropriate dose of growth- regulator recommended for each zone. “Farm vehicles equipped with global - positioning system locaters automatically mix and apply the prescribed dose to each area,” he says.
France so far is leading in harnessing this technology. But climate change will command the need to monitors farms to increase, as farmers can no longer depend on the past as a guide into the future. “When confounded by the yield variations that the new weather patterns brings, even technophobic farmers will sign up, says one of the agriculture sales head.
Inexpensive data on productivity of land will be accessed by governments. Areas where fertilizers and pesticides are being applied can be pinpointed, studied and regulated by environmental and land use agencies.
One of the agronomics says that satellite data are proving useful for a study of fields with declining productivity. Yes, they will monitor the overkill with nitrate fertilizers – which are a source of green house gases, too. Indeed, insurance companies are studying satellite data with a view to selling crop-insurance policies to governments of countries that might be threatened by famine.
In some countries where this satellite technology is already in use, some companies have started selling data that will help the farmers forecast harvests. Thus farmer will no longer limit their productivity by managing fields uniformly – production will be broken down into patches of just five metres square.
This technology will come handy in Africa whose soils are badly depleted of nutrients; better fertilizer management will go along way. In this regard, the World Agroforestry Centre based here at Nairobi has begun cataloguing the radiation signature – that is agriculture potential of about 10,000 samples of African soils. “It is giving this detailed information to the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, based in Columbia, so that it can build a database called the Digital Soil Map,” the experts says, “When ready this will provide farmers with free forecasts, developed with regularly updated satellite imagery, across farmland in 42 African countries. For hunger – ravaged continent, that is good news indeed.”
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