49 MARTINDALE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE calling the fourth industrial revolution. An abundance of data gives farmers the ability to track and manage the entire food supply chain, make smarter judgments, and produce more sustainably. The use of digital technology and automation on farms has significantly increased in recent years. Danish farmers can now accurately determine the requirements for fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, and water in their fields thanks to remote sensing. Precision farming (PF),2 controlled traffic farming,3 and global positioning (GPS) technology in the agricultural sector can aid in reducing GHG emissions, enabling farmers to optimize resource use, reduce waste, and make informed decisions about crop management. PF technology allows farmers to apply fertilizers, pesticides, and water only where they are needed, reducing waste and minimizing the release of GHGs associated with the production and transportation of these inputs. Denmark has been using PF for about 10 years. The early adopters began with yield mapping and monitoring before moving on to applying fertilizers at variable rates, mostly lime and to a lesser extent nitrogen. The early PF practitioners were technical enthusiasts, and as of now, 400 Danish farmers (or around 9% of the cereal acreage) have implemented some site-specific and GPS-related technology on their farms (Lundø & Larsen, 2018). With GPS-guided equipment, farmers can avoid overlapping the plowing, seeding, fertilizing, and harvesting passes over their fields, thereby reducing fuel, seed, and fertilizer consumption and associated GHGs. In recent years, controlled traffic farming has included auto-guidance and extremely precise real-time kinematic GPS to its field management strategy. Utilizing this technology, agricultural vehicles can travel the same path across a field year after year, minimizing soil damage and possibly increasing yields. By restricting machinery to specific lanes, controlled traffic farming reduces the amount of field area that is compacted and therefore the amount of fuel needed to move machinery over the field. In the long term, the use of these precision technologies means that farms will use less fossil fuel to operate machinery as well as fewer inputs of seed, herbicides, and pesticides. If agricultural technology is so potent and has the capacity to reduce the production of GHGs, why are only a small number of farms using it? The cost associated with the implementation of the equipment remains the biggest factor. Expenditures are too high compared to the projected benefits, according to 50% of the farmers who do not use PF equipment. As a result, the most frequent justification for rejecting new technologies is expense. Next, soil variance can hinder the implementation of these technologies, because it can cause inconsistent results due to differences in nutritional composition, drainage patterns, and water-holding capabilities. Finally, lack of understanding and, more importantly, adherence to traditional farming practices are other reasons why PF technology has not yet been widely adopted (Lundø & Larsen, 2018). However, as technology advances, it is fair to assume that the cost of these devices will go down, and they will be more thoroughly integrated into Danish farms. Biogas Manure management is the source of 2.7 million tons, or around 16% of Denmark’s agricultural production emissions (Searchinger et al., 2021). Because they account for 93% of these manure emissions, the focus is on pigs and cattle. Methane makes up around three-quarters of these emissions and nitrous oxide about one-fourth. Methane is estimated to have a global warming potential that is 28- to 36-times greater than that of CO2 over a 100-year time horizon. However, CO2 is a more prevalent GHG in the atmosphere and has a longer atmospheric lifetime than methane. This means that while methane is more potent, CO2 has a greater cumulative impact on climate change over time. Therefore, both methane and CO2 are essential considerations when addressing GHG emissions and climate change. As such, Danish policy has made controlling manure emissions a top priority, and this includes generous incentives to adopt biodigester technology that decomposes this waste and then utilizes the resulting biogas. Biodigesters use an anaerobic process to break down manure from farm animals or other sources of organic waste. Manure, especially from pigs, which is easily managed, is collected and placed in an enclosed container, known as a digester, and allowed to decompose without oxygen. This process produces biogas as well as a nutrient-rich residue (digestate), which can be used as fertilizer. The biogas can be utilized as a source of energy for several purposes, including the production of electricity, heating, and fuel for vehicles. The organic material needed to make biogas is continuously created by natural processes, and the CO2 emitted during biogas combustion is balanced by the CO2 absorbed by plants during photosynthesis, making it a renewable energy 2PF is an agricultural management approach that uses advanced technologies, such as remote sensing, GPS, drones, and machine learning, to optimize crop production, reduce waste, and minimize the environmental impact of farming. 3Controlled traffic farming is a precision agriculture technique that involves restricting heavy field machinery to specific, permanent traffic lanes, leaving the remaining area untouched for crops.
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