Benefits of GPS agricultural guidance for sustainable agriculture

Abstract

The Global Positioning System (GPS) together with sophisticated machinery guidance systems represents great benefit concerning precise production inputs, minimizing machine errors in the fields and, therefore, lower costs inputs for the agriculture. One of the problems in modern agriculture is soil compaction caused by heavy machinery in the fields. Right the excessive traffic is connected with soil compaction phenomena and its unfavourable effects. Machinery traffic monitoring and detailed analysis of machinery passes across the field can be used as determination of the field areas which are intensively loaded with agricultural traffic. This paper focuses on data obtained from agriculture machinery guidance systems to asses and minimise frequency of agricultural machinery passes across a field and to ensure maximum field job efficiency. Firstly, traffic intensity on a selection of fields was evaluated. Vehicle passes all of field operations and using range of machinery across selected fields were monitored during one year which resulted in a one year traffic intensity map of the fields. Further different tillage systems, machinery working widths and field jobs were evaluated by an evaluation of the number of vehicle passes across the field. The system with ploughing resulted in 86.1 % of total area covered with wheel passes, while the conservation tillage system showed 63.8 % of the area affected by machinery tyres. Secondly, the pass-to-pass accuracy with or without the satellite navigation was evaluated. The measured data were obtained from RTK guidance autopilots which are a prerequisite for precise in-field jobs. The results show significant benefits of satellite navigation. Without using the satellite navigation during a field operation, a tendency to passes overlapping was found out. Overall, the experiments revealed enormous intensity of the agriculture machinery passes, randomly trafficking agricultural fields. The application of GPS machinery guidance was a potential to decrease the number of machinery passes in the fields and can reduce the costs of field jobs.