Zhang, Q. (editor) Precision Agriculture Technology for Crop Farming.

CRC Press,
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742, USA, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4822-5107-4. (Handcover),
xiv + 360pp. Price £82.00.

This book gives a comprehensive global overview of crop based precision farming techniques.
Whilst there has been a plethora of conferences or workshops around precision farming over the
last 30 years, it has been challenging for those more indirectly and directly involved in the precision
farming industry to distinguish between reliable scientific information from commercially driven
literature. This book fills this gap and helps to direct the reader to a wide range of quality crop
technology research papers.

The book is logically structured and begins with a history of precision farming from researchers
needing to account for variability within experimental design to grid sampling and the US
Department of Defence permitting civilian usage of GPS in 1993. The book then gives an overview of
the early adopting technologies through to current usage and speculation of future Nano sensing
advancements.

After the gentle historical chapter each subsequent chapter starts with a useful introduction to the
detailed elements of precision farming. This structure allows readers from varying backgrounds to
access the subsequent research based information with a detailed overview of the key elements that
have influenced the development of precision farming technology for that section.

The early part of the book has chapters detailing sensing technologies, data processing and
utilisation and control of precision agriculture. All these chapters draw on the information which has
informed the algorithms used and processing information for crop sensing. Models are presented
which justify the data fit and these are usefully summarised in process flow diagrams which help the
reader to appreciate the sequence and use of different data sets and respective controls. The book
then moves on to address the incorporation of sensor technology and models into intelligent farm
machinery and field robots and then continues to set out how this machinery is used in large scale
mechanised farming.

The following chapters give an interesting perspective of how the adoption of precision agriculture
may differ within different social economic scenarios. A case study is reported of community based
learning to optimise food crop management through the use of precision farming in Indonesia.
Another interesting case study relates to precision technologies in the recovery phase from the 2011
Japanese tsunami. There is a chapter dedicated to sensing technology and application in China
which has been rolled out in a mind blowing scale. The global need for safe, quality and traceable
food is addressed through the lens of precision agriculture and highlights how technology is being
used or could be used to help the implementation of good agricultural practices (GAP).

Finally, the book considers how state of the art technology is utilised and some of the future
requirements to make crop production increasingly more efficient and how this can or may be
achieved. It also considers the pros and cons of robotic farming and helps the reader envisage how
these future systems may work through interesting picture flow diagrams which make everything
seem more realistic.
Overall this book works well and each chapter can stand alone by explaining its subject matter. The
book provides a comprehensive overview on the techniques, developments and opportunities of
precision crop farming. The only factor that was quite difficult as a reader throughout the book is
the large number of black and white graphs and images (although there is a section of colour plates)
which did lead me to consider an alternative title of ‘Fifty shades of precision farming’!

Nicola Cannon