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PrecisionAg WORKS: $5-$9 MORE PER ACRE |
Lower input costs and higher yields. That’s how users of precision ag technology say they’ve benefited from applying these tools to their farming operation.
Eight of 10 farmers using precision agriculture indicate they’ve made anywhere from $5 to $9 more per acre, depending on crop (corn, cotton, soybeans or wheat) and region. And that was before prices for many of those crops went on a steep uphill climb.
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Precision Ag Institute research provides a look at what responders indicated they were saving by putting precision technology to use (Figure 3). A savings of $2.01 to $5.00 was the most common response, as the numbers appearing on the bars indicate. The numbers at the end of the bars on the right-hand side offer an indication of how successful some producers feel they have been, actually saving $5 to $9 per acre.
But which of the benefits of precision agriculture is more important to the bottom line, lowering costs or improving yield?
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Research with users shows that many growers would say that lowering costs is the key component. Grower response to the “lower cost or higher yield” question for the use of a Global Positioning System (GPS) tallies out a bit differently depending on the crop you raise (Figure 4). In wheat country, the issue seems to be one of lowering costs while in the corn belt or cotton country, growers are more likely to say that the combination is more important. Results are similar for the adoption of electronic controllers and for yield monitors. The “scorecard” element of using yield monitors, though, came through strongly in the survey with nearly 60 percent of corn, soybean and wheat growers, and 88 percent of cotton growers, indicating that the yield monitor helped them both lower costs and increase yields.
Results here were gathered on or about March 2007 before our current increases in commodity prices and input costs were being felt. – K. Elliott Nowels
