Volume 9, Number 5 • September/October 2001 • Advanced Technologies

Helping Farmers Compete in World Markets

Using the same handheld computer systems similar to many of today’s personal data assistants, downloaded images are matched with GPS data to give their exact location on a grid of farmland. Researchers offer their entomological expertise to determine what areas of the research fields need to be sprayed with pesticides or plant growth regulators. Photo provided by Stennis Space Center.

The United States has the largest and most productive agricultural sector in the world, but high production costs, low commodity prices and an overall high level of risk increasingly challenge American farmers. NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center is taking a lead role in helping farmers meet these challenges.

To help American farmers better compete in the world market, NASA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) started the Ag 20/20 program in 2000. The aim of Ag 20/20 is to utilize NASA research and technology to create tools that a farmer can use to more efficiently manage production, save money and help preserve the environment.

“The program demonstrated opportunities for significant savings for farmers with new fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide application techniques last year. This summer, the program is seeing even more positive results,” said Ag 20/20 technical manager Rodney McKellip of NASA’s Earth Science Applications Directorate at Stennis.

Dr. Jay Hardwick’s 7,200-acre cotton farming operation near Newellton, Louisiana is a site of one Ag 20/20 project this year. NASA researchers are teaming with Louisiana State University (LSU) to use digital photographs taken from an airplane or satellite to determine where in a field the farmer needs to apply such things as pesticides or plant growth regulators. The images are used to create a color vegetation index map that separates the field into several categories of vegetation health.

“This is the crucial step in the project, because certain crop-damaging insects are first drawn to the most healthy areas of a cotton field,” McKellip said. “By knowing where these harmful pests are most likely to be, we are better able to prescribe a cost-efficient treatment that applies pesticides only to at-risk areas of the field. In addition to saving the farmer money, using less pesticide to control bugs in cotton has the added benefit of less impact on the environment.”

Technicians, scientists and students from LSU working on the ground utilize the NASA imagery. Using the same handheld computer systems similar to many of today’s personal data assistants, downloaded images are matched with GPS data to give their exact location on the farmland grid. The LSU researchers offer their entomological expertise to determine what areas of the research fields need to be sprayed after scouting a number of locations in the fields. The technicians then transmit insect infestation data back to Stennis.

From there, the researchers work with the farmer and his consultants to determine an exact insecticide prescription to apply—one that adequately controls the insect pressures while saving the farmer money on labor and chemicals. In similar tests last year, this “precision” approach to pesticide application for cotton was shown to be 22 percent less costly than the traditional whole-field application. That savings is significant, since insecticides represent one of the largest variable costs for a cotton farmer.

The Ag 20/20 program is involved with other projects beyond the cotton fields of the Hardwick farm. Corn, cotton, soybean and wheat growers in the West, Midwest and Southeast are currently involved in the projects that address other priority issues in commodity production. NASA and the USDA remain committed as a team, working together toward the benefit of American agriculture.

As the program knowledge and methods mature, and U.S. farmers continue to compete in the world market, the Ag 20/20 program may well prove a defining edge for future American farming viability in the global economy. Q

For more information, contact Paul Foerman at Stennis Space Center, 228/688-1880 or paul.foerman@ssc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

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