Gopi, Arepalli (author), Sudha, L. R. (author), and Joseph, S. Iwin Thanakumar (author)
Format:
Book chapter
Publication Date:
2025-01-24
Published:
Scrivener Publishing LLC
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 209 Document Number: D13544
Journal Title Details:
299-319
Notes:
21 pages, chapter 16 from "Smart Factories for Industry 5.0 Transformation", Sensor technologies enable data-driven, efficient, and sustainable precision agriculture. This initiative monitors, manages, and predicts plant diseases using sensors, cloud computing, and data analytics to improve crop health and productivity. Plant and environmental data is monitored by soil, humidity, temperature, and leaf wetness sensors. Machine learning algorithms discover illness outbreak trends and abnormalities in real-time data on a cloud platform. According to the study, a complete IoT infrastructure easily transfers data from field sensors to cloud servers and decision support tools to end-users. Edge computing preprocesses data and delivers only relevant data to the cloud, decreasing latency and bandwidth. This allows fast, accurate disease prediction models to warn farmers of new hazards for proactive management. The study also examines how alternate communication protocols increase data transfer in agricultural fields with poor circumstances. We also explore how geospatial and sensor data accurately map and quantify disease risk. Cloud-based data analytics improves sickness prediction, operational efficiency, and resource management, this study revealed. This integrated strategy reduces plant diseases, herbicides, and fertilizers, improving sustainability. The scalable, cost-effective answers to modern farming problems in this research support precision agriculture.
12 pages, If we are to attain a sustainable future, humanity will need to make drastic changes towards a life based on sustainability in all areas, especially in the economic sector, including food production. The task of educating for sustainability needs to include food producers (farmers and livestock breeders). This article describes an educational experience carried out within the framework of a proposal presented in the “Second Call for Grants to Promote University-Company Projects” at the Technological Campus of Algeciras (Spain). It consisted of conducting in-depth interviews with farmers and livestock breeders, identifying the practices in the daily management of their farms, and having them participate in an education and training event in which they shared their knowledge. It was not an easy task because food producers have systematically been attacked by currents of opinion that blame them for causing greenhouse gas emissions. We adopted an approach based on empathy and on encouraging sustainable food production practices.
15 pages, Advisory services are considered to play an important role in the development of competitiveness and sustainability in agriculture. Advisory services have been studied at policy level, structural level and within case studies, but there is still restricted knowledge about advisors’ and farmers’ view on advisory services in general. This paper presents the views of Swedish advisors and farmers on advisory services. In a survey-based study, perceptions of farm advisors and full-time farmers in commercial Swedish agriculture on advisory services were identified and statistically analysed, comparing differences between and within the groups. The results are structured around three main themes; motives for a farmer using or not using advisory services, preferred approach by the advisor and future demands on advisory services and their importance today. Possible consequences of differences in perceptions for on-farm service delivery were assessed. Similarities in perceptions on advisory services among advisors and farmers, were found in areas characterised by well-defined questions or production-related issues. Significant differences in perceptions of advisors and farmers emerged in less concrete areas and on topics connected to change, management and strategy. Consequences of discrepancies in perceptions are that advisors may deliver too much, too little or off target, especially when expectations on advisory services are not clearly expressed. A strong and proactive back-office supporting the advisors is needed to prevent these possible consequences.
14 pages, As agricultural conservation priorities evolve to address new complex social-ecological problems and emerging social priorities, new conservation incentive program participation and success can be enhanced by incorporating local stakeholder preferences into program design. Our research explores how farmers incorporate ecosystem services into management decisions, their willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem services programs, and factors beyond compensation level that would influence participation. We conducted three focus groups with 24 participants between January of 2019 and May of 2019 in Vermont. Our study revealed that a strong, intrinsic stewardship ethic motivates farmers to enhance ecosystem service provisioning from their farms, though financial pressures often limit decision-making. These results suggest that programs with sufficient levels of payment may attract participation, at least among some types of farmers, to enhance ecosystem services from farms in Vermont. However, farmers may be deterred from participating by perceived unfairness and distrust of the government based on previous experiences with regulations and conservation incentive structures. Farmers also expressed distrust of information about ecosystem services supply that conflicts with their perceptions of agroecosystem functioning, unless delivered by trusted individuals from the extension system. The delivery of context-specific information on how management changes impact ecosystem service performance from trusted sources could enhance farmers’ decisions, and would aptly complement payments. Additionally, farmers expressed a desire to see a program that both achieves additionality and rewards farms who have been stewards, goals that are potentially at odds. Our findings offer important insights for policy makers and program administrators who need to understand factors that will influence farmers’ willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem service programs and other conservation practice adoption initiatives, in Vermont and elsewhere.
