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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Columbia, Missouri » Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #359975
Research Project: Sustainable Intensification of Cropping Systems on Spatially Variable Landscapes and Soils

Location: Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research

Title: Agriculture and digital sustainability: A digitalization footprint

Author
item MARINELLO, FRANCESCO - Universita Di Padova
item COHEN, YAFIT - Israel Agricultural Research Organization (ARO)
item FOUNTAS, SPYROS - University Of Athens
item KARKEE, MANOJ - Washington State University
item MARTINEZ-CASANOVAS, JOSE - Universitat De Lleida
item PARAFOROS, DIMITRIOS - University Of Hohenheim
item SARTORI, LUIGI - Universita Di Padova
item SORENSEN, CLAUS - Aarhus University
item STENBERG, BOSSE - Swedish University Of Agricultural Sciences
item Sudduth, Kenneth - Ken
item TISSEYRE, BRUNO - University Of Montpellier
item VELLIDIS, GEORGE - University Of Georgia
item VOUGIOUKAS, STAVROS - University Of California, Davis

Submitted to: European Conference on Precision Agriculture Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/22/2019
Publication Date: 7/8/2019
Citation: Marinello, F., Cohen, Y., Fountas, S., Karkee, M., Martinez-Casanovas, J., Paraforos, D., Sartori, L., Sorensen, C., Stenberg, B., Sudduth, K.A., Tisseyre, B., Vellidis, G., Vougioukas, S. 2019. Agriculture and digital sustainability: A digitalization footprint. In: Stafford, J.V. (ed). Precision Agriculture ’19 - Proceddings 12th European Conference on Precision Agriculture, July 8-11, 2019, Wageningen, Netherlands. p. 83-89.

Interpretive Summary: The amount of digital information used in agriculture has increased greatly in recent years. The costs and complexity associated with collecting, processing, storing, and utilizing this information need to be considered for the sustainability of the combined digital - physical system. This concept paper introduces the "digitalization footprint", which provides a way to quantify the amount of digital information used in agriculture and can be used to facilitate a discussion of effective utilization of information technology in agriculture.

Technical Abstract: The growing availability of monitoring stations, proximal and remote sensing technologies, geolocalization systems, standard communication protocols, etc., along with apparently decreasing costs of the same technologies are pushing widespread collection, implementation, transmission and use of digitalized information in agriculture. Such uncontrolled processes pose questions on sustainability of the Virtual Environment where such processes take place. The aim of the present work is to introduce a digitalization footprint (DF), which parameterizes the amount of digital information. The DF is intended to quantify the specific or general use of digital or processing information in terms of volumes/time/efforts/costs invested for data storage, processing or transfer. Such a digitalization footprint can be directly related to the availability and suitability of the digital resources in terms of costs (storage, transfer, processing, cloud computing) and speed (processing, upload, download), and can help in defining pathways for effective and widespread development.