Keith Shepherd is Chief Scientist and cofounder of Innovative Solutions for Decision Agriculture (iSDA), where he is implementing AI-enabled, digital agronomic advisory tools for smallholder famers in Africa. He has over 40 years’ experience in agricultural research and development, including over 30 years with World Agroforestry (ICRAF) based in Nairobi, where he led international research programmes on sustainable land/soil management and applied decision science. He has pioneered global developments in soil-plant diagnostics using infrared and x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and in 2021 was awarded the Foodshot prize: Innovating Soil 3 Deep Dive Groundbreaker. He co-founded the Africa Soil Information Service and co-authored the iSDASoil digital soil map of Africa. Keith has led the development of a Global Soil Spectral Library & Estimation Service and helps steer the Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good network. He is currently assisting the National Cooperative Soil Survey of the USA on deployment of soil infrared spectroscopy in their field offices.
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"Proximal Soil Sensing in Agriculture – Advancing from Today’s Applications to Tomorrow’s Opportunities
"Proximal soil sensing holds significant potential to improve agriculture by delivering actionable soil information. How much progress has been made in today’s applications and how can we accelerate progress to capitalise on tomorrow’s opportunities? Soil sensing has value when there is a benefit to be gained from either: (i) larger numbers of measured samples, (ii) more rapid measurements, (iii) lower cost measurements, (iv) non-invasive measurements, or a combination of these. This capacity allows us to increase the spatial density and temporal frequency of soil measurements. These advantages translate into: (i) reduced estimation error and wider applicability of soil spatial models, and (ii) increased statistical precision for detecting management effects on soil properties and their changes over time. In which application areas has soil sensing moved beyond research and been routinely deployed? What are the tangible gains? I provide examples of successful applications of soil sensing at continental to local scales and examine the reasons for a lack of wider uptake. I conclude by providing recommendations for breaking bottlenecks to more effective use of proximal soil sensing in agriculture and to increasing the benefits for end users of soil information.
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