International Journal of Horticulture, 2017, Vol.7, No.10, 75-81
75
Research Report
Open Access
Precision Agriculture in Mexico; Current Status and Perspectives
Jaime Cuauhtemoc Negrete
Independent researcher on issues of agricultural mechatronics, Graduate in Agrarian Autonomous Antonio Narro University, Postgraduate in Faculty of
Agronomy Eliseu Maciel of UFPel, Brazil
Corresponding email:
International Journal of Horticulture, 2017, Vol.7, No.10 doi:
Received: 28 Mar., 2017
Accepted: 30 Mar., 2017
Published: 10 May, 2017
Copyright ©2017
Negrete, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Negrete J.C., 2017, Precision agriculture in Mexico; current status and perspectives, International Journal of Horticulture, 7(10): 75-81 (doi:
)
Abstract
Precision agriculture is not for big agriculture properties only, studies have demonstrated that by using precision agricultural
techniques, the increase in yields remain proportionate between large and small plots of land. Additionally, with a significant decrease of
the price of technology, precision agriculture is little by little becoming affordable even to smallholder farmers. In Mexico it is urgent to
apply precision agriculture techniques due to the fact the pressure for food production, and the poverty desperate situation of small
farmers, although there is the pretext that the machinery and equipment used in this technology is too expensive. Information
Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a key role in precision agriculture: for instance, by integrating GPS (Global Positioning
System) and wireless technology into production processes, farmers are able of knowing the exact the amount of fertilizer, water, etc.,
needed for each portion of land, so to maximize the yield per acre, thereby exists the possibility of using smart phones in the country
because there is a growth of 52.6 million smartphones in 2014. Likewise is feasible to use Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Anonymous,
2014). Since the country already exists company that manufactures the equipment so that eventually increases the usability of these
increasingly larger amount. In this paper highlights that in the country there is no interest in precision agriculture, but it is possible to
reverse this situation if the lines of research are promoted on the issue by the schools of mechatronics to undergraduate, master's and
doctoral degrees, as they are more than 100, in support of the four schools that have precision agriculture formal courses.
Keywords
Agriculture; Mexico; Mechatronics; Smart phones; Unmanned aircraft systems
1 Introduction
The surface of agriculture in Mexico is 31.2 million hectares, where 29.9 are agricultural, 1.3 are natural, pasture
grasses and planted some time in 5 years. There are 5.5 million units of production and the agricultural area in
2007 was 30.2 million hectares of which 13.9 are annual crops, perennial crops 8.8, where 7.5 million hectares
were not sown. Mexico has 119.715.000 inhabitants and ranks No. 11 after China, India, United States, Indonesia,
Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Nigeria and Japan. From 2005 to 2010 the population increased by 9 million
representing a growth of 1% per year so that by 2015 we can consider that the population around 125 million,
representing an increase in food needs. It is a challenge, according to sector experts, can be met only from the
practice of sustainable agriculture capable of producing more with less water and energy, and innovation and
technology as tools. The urban population increases; the rural population decreases; this situation means that to
increase food production to reach the limit of the agricultural frontier is the only way to increase productivity and
deal with the use of agricultural machines. In México exist 3.8 million agricultural parcels, 60% measures 2.1
hectares on average, totaling 4,788,000 hectares (one quarter of the total cultivated area) and 2,280,000
small-scale owners.
The present demand in the consumption of food is without doubt one of the factors that originate the planning of
new politics for the modernization in the country. The requests nowadays in the production of the modern
agriculture are oriented toward the systems that reduce the use of supplies and maximize performances and
utilities. A system that offers these results is the agriculture of precision (Reynolds, 2006).
