Women In Precision Agriculture

This book features influential scholarly research and technical contributions, professional trajectories, disciplinary shifts, personal insights, and a combination of these from a group of remarkable women scholars within precision agriculture. The authors provide a holistic and critical overview of the field of precision agriculture (both crop and livestock), highlighting breakthroughs and impactful research led by women investigators including relevant technologies, decision making strategies, practices, applications, economics, opportunities and challenges. They discuss the urgent need for reduced cost, increased productivity, more optimal use of resources, and reduced impact on our environment. The leading female researchers contributing to this book are creating new technological advances that are revolutionizing agriculture. Focuses on advances in precision agriculture led by leading women researchers, scholars, and professionals; Provides insight into women’s technical contributions in precision agriculture; Takes a holistic approach to precision agriculture, addressing both land and livestock applications.

Climatic variations often tend to have adverse effect on the yield and production of crops. Efforts have, therefore, been on for harnessing this natural resource through artificial means for increasing crop productivity. One such technology is protected cultivation. This technique is well adopted in Europe and USA and now China and Japan are leading in controlled sphere production of horticultural crops. In India, the technology is making breakthrough in Karnataka and Maharashtra in protected cultivation of pepper, tomato, cucumber, muskmelon, baby corn etc. Precision farming is defined as the cultivation by adopting technologies which give maximum precision in production of a superior crop with a desired yield levels and quality at competitive production. These include use of genetically modified crop varieties, micropropagation, integrated nutrient, water and pest managements, protected cultivation, organic farming, hi-tech horticulture, and post harvest technology. Post-harvest sector needs lot of precision. Peels, rags, etc. go waste. Many times, peels being rich in polyphenols, colouring pigment, nutrients etc are richer in antioxidant than what we actually eat. Here, we need precision. Precision in management, precision in product diversification, precision in value addition are much sought after aspect.

Over the past two decades, existing documentation of women in the agricultural sector has surveyed topics such as agricultural restructuring and land reform, international trade agreements and food trade, land ownership and rural development and rural feminisms. Many studies have focused on either the high-income countries of the global North or the low-income countries of the global South. This separation suggests that the North has little to learn from the South, or that there is little shared commonality across the global dividing line. Fletcher and Kubik cross this political, economic, and ideological division by drawing together authors from 5 continents. They discuss the situation for women in agriculture in 13 countries worldwide, with two chapters that cover international contexts. The authors blur the boundaries between academic and organizational authors and their contributors include university-based researchers, gender experts, development consultants, and staff of agricultural research centers and international organizations (i.e., Oxfam, the United Nations World Food Program). The common thread connecting these diverse authors is an emphasis on practical and concrete solutions to address the challenges, such as lack of access to resources and infrastructure, lack of household decision-making power, and gender biases in policymaking and leadership, still faced by women in agriculture around the world. Ongoing issues in climate change will exacerbate many of these issues and several chapters also address environment and sustainability. This book is of great interest to readers in the areas of gender studies, agriculture, policy studies, environmental studies, development and international studies.

This book reviews recent innovations in the smart agriculture space that use the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensing to deliver Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutionsto agricultural productivity in the agricultural production hubs. In this regard, South and Southeast Asia are one of the major agricultural hubs of the world, facing challenges of climate change and feeding the fast-growing population. To address such challenges, a transboundary approach along with AI and BIG data for bioinformatics are required to increase yield and minimize pre- and post-harvest losses in intangible climates to drive the sustainable development goal (SDG) for feeding a major part of the 9 billion population by 2050 (Society 5.0 SDG 1 & 2). Therefore, this book focuses on the solution through smart IoT and AI-based agriculture including pest infestation and minimizing agricultural inputs for in-house and fields production such as light, water, fertilizer and pesticides to ensure food security aligns with environmental sustainability. It provides a sound understanding for creating new knowledge in line with comprehensive research and education orientation on how the deployment of tiny sensors, AI/Machine Learning (ML), controlled UAVs, and IoT setups for sensing, tracking, collection, processing, and storing information over cloud platforms for nurturing and driving the pace of smart agriculture in this current time. The book will appeal to several audiences and the contents are designed for researchers, graduates, and undergraduate students working in any area of machine learning, deep learning in agricultural engineering, smart agriculture, and environmental science disciplines. Utmost care has been taken to present a varied range of resource areas along with immense insights into the impact and scope of IoT, AI and ML in the growth of intelligent digital farming and smart agriculture which will give comprehensive information to the targeted readers.

Magdolna Hargittai uses over fifteen years of in-depth conversation with female physicists, chemists, biomedical researchers, and other scientists to form cohesive ideas on the state of the modern female scientist. The compilation, based on sixty conversations, examines unique challenges that women with serious scientific aspirations face. In addition to addressing challenges and the unjustifiable underrepresentation of women at the higher levels of academia, Hargittai takes a balanced approach by discussing how some of the most successful of these women have managed to obtain professional success and personal happiness. Women Scientists portrays scientists from different backgrounds, different geographical regions-eighteen countries from four continents-and leaders from a variety of professional backgrounds, including eight Nobel laureate women. The book is divided into three sections: "Husband and Wife Teams," "Women at the Top," and "In High Positions." Hargittai uses her own experience to introduce her first section on the lives of prominent scientific couples and addresses the joys and disadvantages of husband and wife teams. The second section is a comprehensive exploration of the struggles and triumphs of "women at the top." Hargittai introduces women from countries where relatively little has been written about female scientists. The final section focuses on women scientists involved with science administration and leadership. Hargittai's biographical sketches role models for budding scientists. The book is a much needed account of female presence and influence in the sciences.

Gender equality and environmental goals are mutually reinforcing, with slow progress on environmental actions affecting the achievement of gender equality, and vice versa. Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires targeted and coherent actions.

The growing world population is constantly driving the food demand up. Coupled with the ongoing environmental concern farmers are required to be more precise in food production in order to increase food production and at the same time be environmentally sustainable. This book looks at the various technologies that help farmers gradually achieve precision agriculture (PA). The book discusses technologies that help observe measure and compute variabilities in production in order to achieve accuracy in operations. The book also looks at the importance of PA in quality assurance of activity and processes along the value chain by ensuring transparency among value chain players and ensuring compliance with good agricultural practices (GAPs). This book will help the audience understand the principles of PA in crop and animal production and also help them gradually adopt PA practices in production based on their level.