The global trend in agricultural demand and production is related to the increase in global population. According to the United Nations, the global population is rising by almost 80 million per year. A growing middle class indicating an increasing wealth will double world food demands by the year 2050 with 9 billion people inhabiting the Earth. These changing trends make issues regarding food crisis and security a global focal point. The yields of major grains grow by about 1% per year, which is lower than the population growth rate over the world and the increasing food demand of the urban population. Increasing demand for agricultural production has made the ecological and economic burden of agriculture inevitable. However, increasing the agricultural productivity comes at a cost. One-third of the global GHG emissions come from agriculture and the amount of GHG release will continue to increase unless yield levels don't continue to grow. It is widely known that, GHG from agriculture sector mostly comes from increasing arable land, livestock production and fertilizer consumption. This trend creates high demand for improved and sustainable food production technologies, and innovative solutions.
Despite the restrains, with the support of changing technologies, agricultural practices shift to a “precision farming” trend. This trend will become the standard of future farming practices and structures. Digital technologies and data driven innovation, cloud-based and connected machines add-up to the agricultural value chain. Existing farmland is capable of supplying the growing demand for food with the help of technological developments and agricultural input optimization.
Currently, traditional tractors and traditional implement systems are not compatible with technologic equipment needed to practice variable rate applications and precision farming. Alternative high technology solutions are expensive and complex. Farmers need to have machineries compatible with ISOBUS (ISO 11783) based systems apart from ISOBUS implemented tractors. ISOBUS structures cannot be adapted to traditionally manufactured agriculture machines. Moreover high technology solutions require much more training and high skills for efficient use.
The novelty of TARGIS-VRA is that it is compatible with existing machines with its innovative retro-fitted structure. No extra machinery investment, training and implementation periods for customers will be necessary to switch their current business model into higher technological devices.
The main objective of TARGIS®-VRA Phase-I proposal is to develop a variable rate application (VRA) system, for use in precision agriculture implementations, which will be the extension and the continuation of the existing TARGIS®-VRA platform. TARGIS®-VRA is a complete system that handles automatic or electronically controlled fertilization process mostly installed on traditional tractors. The system is composed of both hardware and software components with a cloud-based geographical information systems derived farm/field management server side innovative software. The users can either download/load fertilization maps to the control units or apply the fertilizer amounts given on the map automatically or they manually change the rate of fertilizer output with their control units while they are on the tractor at the field.
