GNSS technology has been introduced on about 20 % of the Dutch arable farms in The Netherlands today. Use of sensor technology is also slowly but gradually being adopted by farmers, providing them large amounts of digital data on soil, crop and climate conditions. Typical data are spatial variation in soil organic matter, crop biomass, crop yield, and presence of pests and diseases. We still have to make major steps to use all this data in a way that agriculture becomes more sustainable.

We took up in 2012 the objective to transform a Dutch farm of 200 ha into a Smart Farm. The farm combines arable (winter wheat, potatoes, sugar beet and onion crops) and dairy farming (cows plus grassland and maize crops). Smart Farm means that spatial information on soil, crop, pests and yield data are available and used in strategic and operational decisions. Besides, economic and social aspects are weighed in the strategic and operational decisions. The internet platform that is used to store and visualize the spatial data and to make task maps is Akkerweb.

In 2013 we scanned over 70 ha of the land to obtain soil maps on variation in soil organic matter and clay. Variation in biomass of crops was determined with satellite, airplane, UAS and tractor mounted sensors. Yield monitoring was done in the cereal crops and on grassland. We started a desk study on correlations between soil, crop and yield maps at the end of season 2013. In 2013, we also started on the Smart Farm with experiments on variable planting density of potato seeds, variable rate application (VRA) of soil herbicides, VRA of N-fertilizers and VRA of potato haulm killing herbicides.