The 13th International Conference on Precision Agriculture (ICPA) will be held 31 July 2016 to 3 August 2016 at the Union Station in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The conference attracts oral and poster presentations from scientists around the world. 

The general program outline is available online and registration is open. Abstracts have been accepted and the deadline for full papers and two-page summaries (for poster presentations) is 31 May. Instructions for format and uploading are available. 

The Sunday evening reception will be in the hotel. Monday evening's poster presentations, sponsored by Monsanto/Climate Corp., will be one of many opportunities to network with attendees from all over the globe. 

ICPA will be held in conjuction with the InfoAg conference (2-4 August) which will be held at the same location. ICPA and InfoAg overlap from Tuesday mid-morning through Wednesday noon. Registrants from either conference are welcome to attend sessions from both conferences during that time. To attend the remaining InfoAg events (Wednesday lunch thru Thursday noon) you will need an InfoAg add-on registration. These are available in through ICPA registration. 

ICPA and InfoAg will have a shared exhibits hall, the PrecisionAg Tech Center. There will be over 100 vendors represented and the shared Tuesday evening reception will be hosted in the exhibit hall. (There will be a reception Wednesday evening as well, this is included in the InfoAg add-on registration.)

Two tours are being organized as part of the conference. On Monday, a full-day tour will visit Cortex, a John Deere dealership, and have UAS demonstrations. On Wednesday afternoon, a half-day tour will visit Cortex and the Danforth Plant Science Center. Each tour is an optional, seperate registration. 

Please consider nominating a deserving colleague for the Pierre C. Robert Precision Agriculture Award, and/or a deserving graduate student for the ISPA Graduate Student Awards. More information can be found at: https://www.ispag.org/icpa/Awards. Awardees will be recognized at the 13^th ICPA.

We are seeking supporters for a community proposal to the ISPA board on On-farm data sharing. Please send your name and contact information to Tom Morris. Farmers have the capability as they have never had before to critically evaluate management practices using field-scale replicated strip trials. Collection of results from strip trials across many fields requires protocols for data stewardship, that is, for data reporting, sharing and archiving. All farmer networks have developed data stewardship protocols. The protocols, however, vary from network to network, and the protocols are not easily accessible to people outside the networks. Much could be learned if a standardized set of protocols and guidelines for data stewardship can be created. This is the goal of this new ISPA community.

Do you also have an idea for increasing your involvement in ISPA? Consider joining together with colleagues having common interests to form a Community. Guidance and expectations for ISPA Communities are online. Now is a great time to form a Community so that a first meeting can be held at the upcoming ICPA.

Save the date! The 11^th European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA) will be held in Edinburgh, Schotland, July 16-20, 2017.

The 7^th Asian-Australasian Conference on Precision Agriculture (ACPA) will occur in Hamilton, New Zealand, from 15^th to 20^th October 2017. The first Asian Australasian Conference for Precision Livestock Farming (1ACPLF) will happen in conjunction with the 7^th ACPA. This conference succeeds the Australian New Zealand symposium series on Spacially Enabled Livestock Management (SELM) and introduces additional research and technology topics.

On January 18^th-20^th, 2016 a UK-Canada Symposium on Smart Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture was held at the Canadian High Commission (London, UK) to investigate potential partnerships between the UK and Canada following an earlier workshop in Montreal in July 2014. Approximately 60 participants joined in the main component of the program, with 15 Canadian participants traveling to Cranfield University and Harper Adams afterwards. Through continued support from UK Science & Innovation Network, participants of this event were able to investigate trans-Atlantic collaboration options related to joint research and product development, education and training, data exchange, and joint business ventures. For more, details, please visit this website and do not hesitate in contacting organizers to explore additional ideas pertaining to potential joint initiatives related to implementation of precision agriculture.

Farm Industry News proposes ways to put at work all the data collected on-farm (part 1 and 2). The goal is real-time management. For those who read French, have a look at the “Actes du séminaire « Big Data » of March 10^th, 2016”.

This conference, with no registration fee, will be organized by the University of Idaho in Boise, on August 8^th – 10^th, 2016. Originally designed as a “workshop,” discussions and presentations were built around sensor based methodologies that could increase nitrogen use efficiency in cereal production systems.  Both engineering and agronomic problems continue to be addressed by this group that hopes to deliver “by-plant” N management.

The International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) presents the 5^th AGRICONTROL 2016 on 14 – 17 August, 2016 in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Ag technology, data, and precision agriculture products and practices are impacting every segment of the agriculture industry. This PrecisionAg Innovation Series event aims at moving the industry closer to technical collaboration and best precision practices. The meeting will occur in Des Moines on August 29^th, 2016.

This video presents how drones developed within the frame of the Phenome project by INRA and ARVALIS in France are used to acquire data at the microplot scale.

Called "Hello Tractor", it was enrolled in a South By Southwest (SxSW) conference competition. Each Hello Tractor comes with a GPS antenna. When the tractor has been used enough to need maintenance, it will alert the owner. Even better, the company can use data on tractor location to play matchmaker. A booking system allows farmers to conveniently request, schedule and prepay for tractor services, from nearby Smart Tractor owners, through SMS messaging and mobile money. Once service is completed, the pre-payment is automatically released to the Smart Tractor owner.

NutrientStar (by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)) is the first review program to provide farmers, their advisors, and everyone in the supply chain with reliable data on the performance of fertilizer management tools. Fertilizer management products reviewed through NutrientStar include nitrogen stabilizers such as Dow AgroSciences' Instinct II and N Service; biologics such Verdesian's NutriSphere N; controlled-release fertilizers such as Agrium's ESN; decision support tools, such as Pioneer's Encirca and Climate Corp's Fieldview; and optical sensor technologies such as OptRx and Greenseeker. Ratings are done by an independent review panel composed of soil and agronomy scientists.

Precision Dairy Farming is one of the major topics that influences dairy farming developments world-wide. Following the North American Precision Dairy Farming Conferences (in Toronto, Canada (2010) and Rochester, USA (2013 and 2015)), the first International Precision Dairy Farming Conference will proceed from June 21^st to 23^rd, 2016, in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.

The goal of the Farming by Satellite prize (13,000 euros) is to promote the use of satellites in innovative agricultural practices that will help reduce environmental impacts and increase benefits to end users. Individuals or teams from universities or commercial organisations can submit new ideas and technological solutions, or report case studies of trials, particularly those relying upon European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), the forthcoming GALILEO system and COPERNICUS services (the European Earth Observation Programme).