Sustainable agricultural production depends on the judicious use of natural resources (soil, water, livestock, plant genetic, fisheries, forest, climate, rainfall, and topography) in an acceptable technology management under the prevailing socio-economic infrastructure.
- Agricultural mapping
The application of GIS in agriculture is important because is very helpful in mapping the current and future variations in the sleet, crop output and temperature of the soils. The mapping of the current features of a farm enables scientists and farmers to work together towards the same goal of creating more diverse, effective and efficient farming techniques. GIS can present combinations of map layers to address different agricultural problems. Using these detailed maps, they can plan the most efficient and cost-effective way to use their land.
- Land suitability assessment and land use planning
GIS provides an excellent platform for assessing the quality of land for suitable applications. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach based on GIS is the most popular choice among researchers for land use planning. Researchers use different features offered by GIS such as soil type distribution, soil texture map, buried deep underground water level distribution, soil fertility distribution, soil pollution distribution, hydraulic conductivity of soil , slope , GIS Applications in soil texture , depth to water-table , and electrical conductivity of ground-water , climate conditions, topography, and satellite data, and identify the variety of interactions, dependencies, and the impact of these interacting factors on sustainable land use.
- Water Management
Abundance of water supply is a primary requirement for meeting the demand for food production by the ever-increasing global population. Irrigation is the best solution for meeting the water requirement in agriculture. The farmer can determine where rain water is draining too quickly or too slowly so that either engineering steps can be taken to reroute its flow, or chemicals can be applied to improve the internal drainage of the soil. Aircraft and satellites equipped with high-resolution cameras take images that allow AI algorithms to calculate the water stress in each crop and spot visual patterns behind water shortages. Crop gets enough water is a challenging task, but one easily tackled by geoinformatics in agriculture.
- Precision Farming and Farming automation
Farmer can plan their crops down to the very last with the help of GIS. GIS software can be used to gather and coordinate important data like soil composition. The sensors present in tractors, satellites and in fields play a vital role in collecting data. Using Geographic Information System in this area helps in the shaping of the collected data into viable information that is accessible and easy to interpret by land managers and farmers.
Seeding machines, intelligent irrigation systems, driverless harvesters, and weed remover robots are the inevitable future. You could equip each of your machines with sophisticated sensors. GIS in farming can provide precise maps, including all necessary information about the crops in the field. Maps like those are called task maps or application maps. Smart machines use them to tend to the field. Apart from providing signals for machines, task maps can help unskilled workers do their job more efficiently.
- Data Combination and Real time monitoring
Using satellite technology helps in the collection of real-time data from the surface of the earth, accesses, and monitors the condition of the land. In addition to that, the use of drone technology has aided in the collection of data, especially local field data such as the height of plants, diseases, flower count and the presence of weed among others. This improvement in technology has helped reduce the amount of time that could have been consumed in walking to and from the field in search of data. GIS technology solve any crop issues that arise, protect the crops and provide solutions to fake claims of crop damage. The system has also given the farmers an added advantage of having access to their crop information every season.
- Crop health monitoring
Checking crop health across multiple acres manually is the least efficient option. This is where remote sensing combined with GIS in farming comes to the rescue. Satellite images and input information can be paired to assess environmental conditions across the field, such as humidity, air temperature, surface conditions, and others. Based on GIS, precision farming can upgrade such an assessment and help you decide which crops require more attention. A more sophisticated approach uses imaging sensors on satellites and air vehicles to check the temperature of crops. When the temperature is above normal, this might indicate a disease, infestation or insufficient irrigation. Soil characteristic maps can help with crop planning. A map of soil themes such as salinity, internal drainage, pH and various aspect of soil chemistry that are important to the crop, a farmer is planning on planting, can provide an important information backdrop for understanding whether or not a crop will grow successfully in an area.
- Livestock monitoring
The simplest application of farm GIS software in animal husbandry is the tracking of movement of specific animals. This helps farmers find them on a farm and monitor their health, fertility, and nutrition. GIS services that allow you to do that comprise trackers installed on animals and a mobile device that receives and visualizes information from those trackers.