USDA Study: Large Corn Farms ‘Twice as Likely’ to Adopt Precision Agriculture
If you’re running a large corn or soybean operation, you’re a lot more likely to be using precision agriculture practices and seeing results like increased operating profits — at least that’s what research by the USDA says, writes Anna McConnell over at Agriculture.com.
The study, Farm Profits and Adoption of Precision Agriculture, focused on three precision agriculture practices: guidance or auto-steer systems, variable-rate technology (VRT), and GPS-based mapping systems.
How Popular is Precision Ag?
In the past 10 years, tractor guidance systems have gotten popular more quickly than variable-rate input application. Guidance is utilized on a whole 50% of U.S. corn and soybean acres, while only 28% to 34% of those acres take advantage of VRT. Yield mapping is used on 40% of U.S. corn and soybean acres, while GPS soil maps are utilized on 30% of U.S. corn and bean farmland.
Corn farms over 2,900 acres are twice as likely to adopt precision agriculture than smaller farms. A whole 80% use guidance systems, 70% to 80% are using mapping, and 30% to 40% use VRT.
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Head on over to Agriculture.com to check out McConnell’s full analysis of the USDA survey numbers.
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