Global Food Security and Supply by Wayne Martindale

Author:Wayne Martindale [Martindale, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118699324
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-09-26T17:51:30+00:00

3.8 The Principles of Integrated Management across the Food Chain: A Food Supply Chain Perspective

Integrated management of pests, nutrients, and crops depends on a number of different approaches to optimising yield being utilised to develop profitable and sustainable farms. They can include the following headline actions.

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS's) has started to replace traditional field maps and have the potential to revolutionise farming practices. GIS have provided more fit-for-purpose means of using maps within an Information Technology (IT) framework; the map remains the same whether it is digital or on paper or transparency formats. Indeed, this is the principle of precision agriculture and the techniques associated with it that target agricultural inputs and outputs to specific areas. The use of soil and plant sensors to target inputs is becoming important in farming systems, and metabolic sensors have been discussed. The use of precision agricultural techniques for outputs has focused on harvesting efficiency and transport of products. All farm maps will include general reference points, including streams, residences, well heads, number of hectares, and soil types. This is the basis for the rest of the plan. The use of GIS systems to map farms is becoming more common as computer power increases and their price decreases. Maps of sufficient resolution for farms are available free or at minimal cost on the World Wide Web and ‘off-the-shelf’ software providing GIS applications. GIS software has become compatible with other standard software packages that handle spreadsheets and databases so that a GIS system can be interfaced with other expert systems. These systems are able to store long-term records for assurance and traceability purposes. Furthermore, GIS systems can be utilised to map activities across food supply chains from producers to consumer functions.

Soil and agricultural product testing is critical because this will determine how much nutrient is being utilised as N, P, K, trace nutrients and provide assessment of pH and SOM so that nutrient balances can be developed. Again, the use of analytical data provides a means to use sensor-related and threshold values for developing management actions, such as the use of fertiliser, pesticides, and processing operations.

Cropping plans should be prepared to represent market trends and the environmental sustainability of farming enterprises. This will include assessment of estimated yield; factors affecting yield are numerous and complex. Using historic series of yield records is important in developing yield estimates, and the more accurate the yield estimate, the easier it is to potentially optimise input use efficiency. Furthermore, the use of market information regarding the price trends and volatility agricultural products and food ingredients will be utilised in determining crop plans.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.