Twenty Years of Precision Farming - more Questions than Answers?

Yield sensors and electronics came up as door-openers for Precision Farming in the early 90th. Electronic controllers for precise application in fertilizer spreaders and sprayers are today state-of-the art. ISOBUS would guarantee standardized electronic communication but is still not in use on farm level for some reasons. Site-specific application still suffers due to poor adoption to the needs of farmers, but real-time application systems are greatly accepted and mainly used by contractors as well as by large farm units. As far as precision farming is more than site-specific treatment farmers prefer auto-guidance systems to gain comfort through automation and fast return of investment. Automation and alternative energies will gear agricultural mechanisation after handwork, animal draft and mobile crude oil power into a new age. Precision farming then will really come to the farm level if science and industry are willing and able to cope the new challenges.