Professor in Precision Agriculture appointed

Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Maximising yield while minimising waste is the goal of every farmer, but Ian Yule has made a career out of it. In a New Zealand first, he has been promoted to the position of Professor in Precision Agriculture.

Professor Yule, who works within the Institute of Natural Resources, says his work is all about trying to reduce error margins. “Rather than giving the whole farm an average and applying fertiliser based upon that, we find ways to precisely map the pasture or crop,” he says. “This means we can then apply only what’s needed.”

Minimising unnecessary agricultural inputs means savings for the bank balance and the environment. Professor Yule’s role at the University differs from many similar positions around the world, where precision agriculture is focused on crop farming. In New Zealand pastoral farming is a major focus.

With four PhD students working on research at the Centre for Precision Agriculture, his work spans top-dressing and other fertiliser application methods, and pastoral sensing for growth rates and quality. His work has also gained commercial success. He and two of his postgraduate students did the initial development work on the CDax Pasturemeter now used on many dairy farms.

Professor Yule is trialling a new pasture and crop sensor that can be fitted to the bottom of a small aircraft. “There are only two of these sensors in the world,” he says. “So rather than having a sensor on a vehicle, you can have the sensor on the plane and it covers the area much faster. It’s quite small, so we could also put it on a radio-controlled plane.”

The sensor uses light readings – in the visible range and near infrared – to capture the rate and quality of pasture growth in the area.

The aircraft can fly below cloud cover, overcoming the problem of trying to get the same information from a satellite. “This is also immediate. We can get the data right before fertiliser is applied, meaning we know exactly how much to put where.”

It is the intersection of farming, economics and sustainability that drives Dr Yule’s work. He grew up in a farming family in northeast Scotland. “My brother did a family tree and traced back about 800 years – and it looks as if we have always been farmers. It’s always been my passion.”

He studied agricultural engineering at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in England and worked at a variety of places there before coming to Massey 13 years ago.

“I felt there was more scope for the things I wanted to do in terms of production agriculture here. It was a time in Europe when there were subsidies to stop you producing, whereas what really interested me was finding ways to make production more efficient.

“I want to make sure the environmental impact of what we do is minimised as much as possible. The world needs more food, but we can’t produce it at the expense of the environment. By reducing waste and making much more efficient use of fertiliser, I think we can reduce our impact.”

Caption 1: Professor Ian Yule. Caption 2: The map shows the results of sensing a wheat paddock in early growth stage and indicates the large variations in crop biomass. The dark green and blue areas represent a greater crop density and increased growth.

ENDS

© Scoop Media