Site Specific Agriculture based on Farmers' Experience

Abstract

Solution Scenario Concept: The basic premises we work from are that: (a) as the conditions under which farmers operate are highly heterogeneous and farmers are always trying out something new, every time a farmer plants and harvests a crop it is an experiment, and (b) if it were possible to compile the information on what the farmer did and characterize the conditions of a large number of these experiments it would be possible to deduce optimum practices for specific conditions. This approach is actually as old as agriculture itself with farmers constantly experimenting, observing and innovating: what is new is the power of modern information technology available to us to exploit to the full this approach. It is now feasible to bring together multiple experiences, and through network effects, obtain vastly more valuable knowledge than that gleaned from a limited number of cases.