Project Overview

Precision Sustainable Agriculture integrates sustainable agriculture and precision to maximize farm productivity, profitability, and sustainability. Our transdisciplinary team consists of universities, government agencies, private businesses, and farmers. We connect farmers with site-specific knowledge through technology and people to enable science-based, real-time decision making and long-term planning.

The Problem

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 will require transformative changes to our food production systems. Water scarcity, herbicide-resistant weeds, climate change, and declining soil and water quality are increasing crop production risks, lowering yields and negatively impacting the environment. Increased use of sustainable agricultural practices, such as reduced-tillage, diversified crop rotations, and integrated weed management in tandem with cover crops, is necessary to achieve this goal. However, farmers repeatedly cite management complexity and a need for site-and system-specific information to aid in our transition to sustainable agriculture.

Our Response

At Precision Sustainable Agriculture (PSA), we have built a thriving, trans-disciplinary community consisting of agricultural experts, engineers and data scientists, social scientists, commodity boards, NGOs, agribusiness, and technology companies. Using real-time communication and coordination, PSA builds pathways from scientific discovery to the development of useable and useful, web-based decision support tools (DSTs). DSTs inform farmer management decisions about cash and cover crops, and help farmers allocate resources and labor and increase efficiency while improving their farms and environment.

Continued Solutions

As farmers utilize the DSTs and provide feedback, PSA works to improve the precision of our recommendations, creating a continuous positive feedback loop for increasing the precision and sustainability of our food systems.