Precision Agriculture in Taiwan: Examples and experiences

Abstract

Since 1997, Taiwan has been planning for precision agriculture. In 1999, a pilot project was launched with rice as the target crop, entitled “Studies on Precision Farming System for Rice (1999-2002).” Although this four-year project cannot solve all rice production problems comprehensively and effectively, the concept of precision agriculture and the development of related technologies have progressively spread to various fields of agricultural research. Moreover, through various experimental studies conducted by different research institutions, a large number of experimental data has been accumulated, and it has gradually expanded to the production and application of various agricultural products. In the era of booming information and communication technology (ICT), as well as the fact that the proportion of aging farming population has increased year by year, the corresponding result is a shortage of labor in Taiwan. Therefore, precision agriculture at this stage has introduced elements of smart agriculture. With that, the Productivity 4.0 project and the Smart Agriculture Project were initiated in 2016 and 2017, respectively, by the Council of Agriculture (COA) of Taiwan (ROC). The development of precision agriculture systems has been listed as one of the three major areas of these two projects. This paper introduces Taiwan's research findings and industrial application examples of precision agriculture in the Smart Agriculture program, including crop quality production system, soil nutrition and irrigation management with geographic information system (GIS), crop disaster prevention and warning system, decision-supporting system for pest management, etc. These examples and experiences may apply to small holders for countries in the AsiaPacific region.