Empowering Farmer Leaders to Acquire and Practice Site-Specific Nutrient Management Technology

Precision agriculture, using high-tech equipment and information science software, is not appropriate for the farmers of small parcels of land in the tropics. Our hypothesis, however, is that the concepts of precision agriculture and participatory action research have a similar philosophical basis and complement each other. We have adopted an approach of both empowering farmers and simplifying nutrient management technology to enable farmers to use the concepts. The simplified technology includes a visual tool to identify soil series, a soil test kit that brings the laboratory to the field, and a decision-aid that enables farmer leaders to interpret the soil test kit data in light of the soil series. The results have demonstrated increased yields with reduced fertilizer inputs over a three-year period in Central Thailand. doi:10.1300/J064v30n01_08 [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.] Tasnee Attanandana is Professor, Department of Soil Science, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand (E-mail: [email protected]). Russell Yost is Professor, Department of Tropical Plants and Soil Sciences, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI (E-mail: [email protected]). Prateep Verapattananirund is President of Eco-Community Vigor Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand (E-mail: [email protected]). Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, Vol. 30(1) 2007 Available online at http://jsa.haworthpress.com © 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1300/J064v30n01_08 87