The ISPA precision agriculture definition (https://www.ispag.org/about/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 ISPA board is considering adding a few words to clarify the “individual data” term in the definition by inserting “plant and animal” after “individual. The revised definition would be:

“Precision Agriculture is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production.”  

 

It should be noted that PLF has its own regional, national and subsector organizations and conferences (e.g. European Association for Precision Livestock farming – EAPLF - https://www.eaplf.eu/ ; the US PLF group - https://plf.tennessee.edu/usplf2023/, and the precision dairy group - https://www.precisiondairyfarming.com/meetings/), but no international organization. The ISPA could function as a forum where crop and livestock precision agriculture interact.