What can precision agriculture do for you?

By: Amanda Wemette

Precision agriculture technologies can provide multiple benefits to producers through input savings, improved time, labor and equipment management, and environmental benefits. Automatic section control (ASC) technology, available for use on sprayers, planters, spreaders, and other application equipment, works by automatically turning sections of equipment off in areas where inputs have been previously applied or in unwanted zones (e.g. environmentally sensitive areas such as grassed waterways).

Research at Auburn University found that ASC can provide a 4.3% average savings on inputs with a payback period of less than 2 years for most application equipment. These savings are a result of reduced overlap at headlands and within point rows. In return, farmers can expect savings between $1.50/ac/yr to $25.00/ac/yr for this technology depending upon crop, management, and field shape and size.

Automatic guidance systems, which reduce overlap and input usage, can save approximately 10% on input savings with farmers seeing a possible 15% to 30% overall savings when using both ASC and automatic guidance systems together. Additional benefits of automatic guidance systems include reducing the concentration time needed during driving, which in turn leads to less fatigue and an increased ability to focus on other tasks.

Yield maps can be used not only to evaluate current and new management practices, but also as a data source for development of site-specific management strategies (e.g. management zones, variable-rate seeding and nutrient prescription maps, etc.).

Furthermore, the adoption of variable-rate technology to vary inputs can provide additional savings and yield benefits to producers by placing the ideal amount of inputs in the right place.

With machine and fleet management, you gain a higher level of understanding about the efficiency, performance and logistics of your entire operation from a computer or mobile device – putting fleet and asset information at your fingertips and enabling you to make big-picture decisions about your operation.

Amanda Wemette is a Sr. Marketing Communications Specialist for AGCO’s Advanced Technology Solutions group, focusing on bringing AGCO’s Fuse precision farming technologies and services to market . Connect with Amanda on Twitter @AmandaWemette.

To see the benefits of precision agriculture, try our simple payback calculator.

A sample shot of the editable ROI Calculator

For more information on AGCO’s precision farming products, data management policy and Fuse Connected Services, please visit www.AGCOcorp.com/Fuse.

Sources: http://nydairyadmin.cce.cornell.edu/pdf/submission/pdf161_pdf.pdf

http://www.precisionag.com/works/institute/eight-of-10-adopters-say-precision-agriculture-pays/

http://www.precisionag.com/works/institute/precision-agriculture-higher-profit-lower-cost/