Nature Conservation perspectives of Precision Farming

Precision Farming is the basis of an information guided plant production. The association project we participated works on basics, methods and management aspects of this new technology. Information Technology is playing an ever-increasing role in arable farming. The combination of new sensors, on-board computers, electronically-controlled machinery, standardised interfaces and both privately and publicly available databases will provide the basis for comprehensive information-driven plant production. An essential technical component for this is Precision Farming, an umbrella term for new production and management techniques in crop production. Precision Farming (or Precision Agriculture) is based on the use of location and crop-monitoring  data in the decision-making process.

We participated the first phase of a project (1998 – 2003) funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research which currently takes the second step (see www.preagro.de). The tasks of our part project were bifold: (1) to monitor the ecological effects of agricultural measures realized within the preagro concept; (2) to develop new methods to persue nature conservation goals by applying precision agriculture.

If only used within conventional agricultural business goals the techniques of precision agriculture may result in significant advantages for soil and water protection. But there are not benefits for biodiversity. However, precision agriculture offers a considerable spectrum of innovative strategies for the support of biodiversity if profiled likewise. Examples are virtual buffer zones around semi-natural habitats, lot-internal stepping-stones or smooth nutrient gradients from forest edges into the field.

Reduction of herbicide application by precision agriculture techniques not resulted in a higher diversity of wild plant species but in a significant increase of groud beetle species