Key Points
- Precision Agriculture (PA) offers a way to farm within the constraints of your soil and climate allowing appropriate economic and environmental decision making.
- Where appropriate paddocks should be treated as two-three zones and farmed accordingly. There are several ways to identify within paddock variability (central to making these decisions).
- The greatest economic gains to within paddock farming can be made in drier seasons when within paddock yield variation is greatest.
- Crops can perform differently in various areas of a paddock and in different seasons. Legume and grass seed crops favour lighter soil type areas than cereals.
- The greatest gains can be made by preferentially applying inputs to the above average performing parts of the paddock. In this research this equated to up to $150/ha across the whole paddock.