Seeing is believing: The role of field days and tours in precision agriculture education

The traditional role of field days and tours has been to introduce growers and agricultural professionals to new technologies and techniques so that the audience could see how these technologies or techniques could be practically used and applied. Based on this concept, the use of field days or tours to demonstrate the radically new technologies and site-specific management techniques behind precision farming is a perfect application of these tools. Indeed, a survey of precision farming field days held in a number of states found that field days were beneficial in showing growers and agricultural professionals global positioning systems, yield monitoring systems, techniques for grid soil sampling, software for geographic information systems, vehicle guidance systems, variable-rate application equipment, and a host of other technologies and processes. In particular, hands-on experiences, such as field demonstrations, guided sampling activities, and combine harvesting demonstrations are extremely well received and valuable. Indoor seminars featuring farmer panels, side-by-side software demonstrations, and demonstrations of geographic information systems have received high marks by participants. The survey found that a field day must be centered on a well-defined objective and a thorough understanding of the needs of the audience. Survey respondents unanimously agreed that precision farming field days and tours will be even more important as future advances in technology and management techniques are discovered. However, future precision agriculture field days or tours must be coupled with other issues or topics where precision agriculture technologies can be used to solve a practical problem and enhance management practices.