This Precision Agriculture (PA) definition has recently been recognized by the Board of directors as the official definition of the International Society for Precision Agriculture (ISPA).

In 2023 the ISPA board determined that it was time to expand upon the Precision Agriculture definition and ensure that the definition can be applied to all areas of agriculture.  The original ISPA precision agriculture definition is widely used by researchers, farmers and agribusiness. That definition is usually interpreted to focus exclusively on managing temporal and spatial variability excluding most of precision livestock farming (PLF) which deals primarily with animal-to-animal variability. The only PLF aspect which has been included in the ICPA, ECPA and in PRAG is precision grazing, which has a strong spatial component. As technology develops and crop PA moves toward individual plant management, PLF and crop PA technologies are converging. It would be beneficial for both communities to be in communication. The proposed change added “plant and animal” to the text: “Precision Agriculture is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data…”
 
This proposed definition change was first distributed to Country Representatives for feedback, followed by two announcements in the ISPA monthly newsletter.  ISPA members were encouraged to submit their feedback and the board received emails from members voicing their support of the definition change.  In January 2024 the ISPA board voted to approve the Precision Agriculture definition change.
 

There was clearly a need to clarify what Precision Agriculture really is. A non-exhaustive list (https://www.grap.udl.cat/en/presentacio/que-fem/definicions-agricultura-de-precisio/) of definitions assembled by the Research Group in AgroICT & Precision Agriculture reported 27 different contributions from the very beginning of PA to date. As the sole international scientific society completely devoted to Precision Agriculture, the ISPA could not avoid the need to provide clarity and guidance on this important concept. The Precision Agriculture concept emerged in the early ‘90s and was then totally focused on the study and management of spatial variability in crop production. Since then, other components of variability and other sectors of agriculture related to the concept in a duly manner.

 

From the beginning, the ISPA Board of directors wanted the definition process to tap into the working force of ISPA members and engage them to the highest possible degree. ISPA then President Nicolas Tremblay, from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, teamed up with Secretary of the time Viacheslav Adamchuk from McGill University and ISPA member Alex Escolà from Lleida University. A four steps development program was agreed upon, consisting of: 1) a survey for key elements; 2) the elaboration of kernel definitions; 3) a Codigital consultation and; 4) approval by the ISPA Board of Directors.

 

The survey ran on the ISPA web platform over the months of April and May 2018. Eighty participants contributed to it. Based on the comments and suggestions received, the triumvirate elaborated three definitions which were presented at a plenary during the 12th International Conference on Precision Agriculture in Montreal (June, 2018). These definitions were used as seeds in a virtual process based on the Codigital platform (https://www.codigital.com/) involving 46 PA experts, coordinated by Dr. Escolà and launched in December 2018. The Codigital platform allows the participants to rank existing definitions or to propose new definitions to be subsequently ranked. Alternatively, edits can be proposed to the existing definitions. These are then voted upon by other participants. If accepted, the former definition evolves into a new version which needs to be ranked again on a pair comparison basis. From the three initial definitions, a total of 17 stemmed out of the consultation. A pause was accommodated to allow participants to comment on them outside of the Codigital platform and the process was reactivated to allow for a short, final round of edits. The top 10 definitions were submitted to the ISPA Board of Directors and the decision was made to adopt the first one as the official PA definition.

 

This definition was the consensus of 36 active participants in the Codigital process and the result of 76 generations based on the edits and votes of all participants.

 

The ISPA is proud of both the definition that emerged and the process by which it was achieved. The ISPA Board wants to thank all people who contributed their time and expertise for this important endeavour, and particularly Dr. Alex Escolà from Lleida University and Dr. Viacheslav Adamchuk from McGill University.