Importance of GIS in Agriculture

GIS which stands for Geographic Information System is a system that is used for acquiring, storing, analyzing, manipulating, and displaying data related to position on Earth’s Surface. GIS helps in vegetation management, soil test factory monitoring, etc. GIS in agriculture has had a great improvement in terms of technology in the past few years.

GIS can be applied in various aspects of Agriculture, which makes the agricultural process easier and faster to manage. Therefore GIS’s importance in Agriculture includes:

1. Crop Yield Prediction: The advancement of technology has made it possible to able use images gotten from remote sensing tools like Satellite, and drones, these images are then analyzed, and the result from this analysis is what is used to predict crops that can be produced in that area and how long I would take for the crops to yield, this is represented in a map.
2. Livestock Monitoring: GIS is of high value in this regard when there’s a need to manage the movement of livestock in the farm area. GIS allows proper tracking of each of the livestock by analyzing the data gotten on the farm, the result gotten from this analysis can be used in decision-making. ( Example: Creating a map showing where the livestock spends time most on a daily basis, this can help know when to position their food or either provide shade)
3. Flood, Erosion, and Drought Control: Before allocating an area for farming purposes there’s a need to have a proper analysis of the area, determine closeness to the water, the terrain of the land, and the type of soils on the land, etc. These analyses would help know where to put each and every livestock with respect to what they need to survive and the closeness to it. This also makes the cleaning process easier to carry out. In terms of drought if there’s no proper planning for water and its passageway in the farmland then we would have issues like a drought but if access to water has been considered like knowing where the closest river is, knowing if there’s a need for a borehole and if there’s enough water in the area, all of this would help in making available enough water supply and reduce erosion.
4. GIS aids in mapping out the farmland which helps displays each and every crop on the farmland. This map created is then used to know the amount of water that’s needed in every part of the farmland, which makes it easier for litigation automation. Drones can be used to wet the farm area and areas with less need for water supply would get less and the areas with high need would get a high level of water.
5. The use of GPS In precision farming has become a vital tool in the agricultural industry. The technology helps to save costs and improves productivity for farm owners, as well as helping the community. This is used in fertilizing crops, where machine sensors gather information, about the crops, then the GPS takes a record of the position it is applied on the field. The automated system then helps the application of fertilizer only to sections where it is needed, this can vary with respect to the nutrient needed in the target area.

   

6. Drones are useful in acquiring of ground data like the height of a tree, the total land area a particular crop covers, weed presence, and nutrient values. This reduces the cost of manual labor to do all of that and provides a more accurate result, this result makes it easier to locate plants in the need of attention and also reduces the spread of diseases.