GIS Applications in Agriculture

Abstract

Technological innovations during the recent centuries have enabled us to significantly boost agricultural production to feed the rapidly increasing global population. While advances in digital technologies triggered the onset of the fourth revolution in agriculture, we also have several challenges such as limited cropland, diminishing water resources, and climate change, underscoring the need for unprecedented measures to achieve agricultural resilience to support the world population. Geographic information system (GIS), along with other partner technologies such as remote sensing, global positioning system, artificial intelligence, computational systems, and data analytics, has been playing a pivotal role in monitoring crops and in implementing optimal and targeted management practices towards improving crop productivity. Here we have reviewed the diverse applications of GIS in agriculture that cover the entire pipeline from land-use planning to crop-soil-yield monitoring to post-harvest operations. GIS, in combination with digital technologies and through new and emerging areas of applications, is enabling the realization of precision farming and sustainable food production goals.