The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture is holding its first conference on precision agriculture on Thursday, Feb. 13 in conjunction with the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville.

The one-day conference will focus on research conducted by UK scientists in developing and assessing precision agriculture technologies for Kentucky producers. This conference will allow scientists to present the results of recent work so that producers can have a better understanding of the possibilities precision agriculture has to offer.

The precision agriculture research is funded by a grant from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Funding from the grant has been in place for four years and is secured for at least three more years.

Twenty-nine researchers and 14 farmer cooperators have worked on 39 projects as part of this research. These efforts are administered by a nine-member committee consisting of personnel from the UK departments of biosystems and agricultural engineering, agronomy and agricultural economics, said Dennis Hancock, UK Extension associate and project coordinator for precision agriculture.

All the work is competitively evaluated by an internal review panel as well as a panel of advisors that includes producers and agribusiness people from the Kentucky Precision Ag Network, K-PAN.  This helps to focus efforts on research that is practical and important, Hancock said. Research findings have been presented annually to members of the review panels but this will be the first time the work will be discussed with the general public.

The conference is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET in rooms 109 and 110 in the South Wing of the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center.

Sessions include getting into precision agriculture, tools of the trade, explaining and managing variability within a field, site-specific management of the soil, tools for decision making, current and future roles of precision agriculture and a practitioner/researcher roundtable discussion. There are three presentations within each topic.

The program is free. Lunch will be on your own.

For more conference information, contact Hancock at 859-257-3000 ext. 331, dhancock@bae.uky.edu or visit the Precision Ag Web site www.bae.uky.edu/precag