Smart Agriculture Conference: GeoAgri

Today's agriculture has transformed into a high-tech enterprise that most 20th-century farmers might barely recognize. Over the past 20 years the ICT, Geospatial Technologies- GPS, GIS, Remote sensing, Drones, Satellite Imageries, electronic sensors and other new tools have moved farming even further into a technological wonderland. Droughts, floods, and erratic weather conditions pose a major threat to food security. Moving forward, proper planning, development, and management of the existing agriculture lands and the farm holder's production practices will secure food supply on a regional and global scale.

The ultimate purpose of all this high-tech gadgetry is optimization, from both an economic and an environmental standpoint. The development of flying robots gives rise to the possibility that most field-crop scouting currently done by humans could be replaced by UAVs with machine vision and hand-like grippers.

Accurate and near real-time information can also enable crop insurance companies to develop better products that are more useful to farmers. Currently, the key challenge is integration of all these five technologies- Biotechnology, Geospatial Technology, ICT, Automation/mechanization and precision analytics etc. In coming days, the grand integration of all these technologies is possible and leads to evergreen "Green Innovation" i.e. "Smart Agriculture".

Understanding the value of ICT and geospatial technology in enhanced decision making, effectively managing resources and assets, enhancing the efficiency of workflows, and improving the accessibility of information, Geospatial Media and Communications brings together a mix of researchers, policy makers, industry, and practitioners from various regions of the world, as a premier scientific conference on smart agriculture which is being organized on 24-25 January, 2017 in Hyderabad, India with the theme: "GeoAgri-Navigating the change" which aims to explore new frontiers of agricultural computerization. There will be showed national and international case studies, in order to allow operators and stakeholders to know the recent progresses on precision & other latest farming technologies. Advantages, challenges and future development perspectives will be highlighted.