Making Precision Agriculture Practical and Profitable September 2000

by Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer, SSMC Director

 

Site-specific crop management makes sense, but that does not mean it automatically makes money. Putting the right seed, in the right place, with the right herbicide strategy and the right fertilizer rates may increase yields or quality, but it also has a cost. Profitable site-specific management is about finding the right balance between costs of site-specific management and its benefits.

 

Precision agriculture technology has dramatically reduced the cost of being site specific on a commercial scale. For example, yield monitors are now giving ordinary farmers yield information that ten years ago was too expensive to gather, even for most research purposes. Farmers and those who advise them are now in the process of figuring out how to best use these precision agriculture tools, including global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, soil sensors, variable rate application.

 

The Site-Specific Management Center (SSMC) was created by Purdue University in February 2000, to help farmers, input suppliers and processors find practical and profitable ways to use precision farming technology. It is a multidisciplinary effort because we are convinced that no one has all the answers. It currently involves 16 faculty in four departments in the College of Agriculture (Faculty and Staff). The work of the SSMC reaches all parts of the land grant university mandate of teaching, research and extension.

 

This website will be one of the key ways in which we reach off-campus. Our electronic newsletter, Site-Specific Highlights, will provide monthly updates with four regular sections:

 

  1. a feature article - highlighting new research or outlining our thoughts on management issues,
  2. tips, tricks & trips - handy precision farming hints that may save you time and money,
  3. links that we find interesting - with our comments how this link fills (or fails to fill) a gap,
  4. events involving SSMC faculty and staff.

 

In addition to the newsletter the website will include a changing variety of information on precision farming research, education and outreach at Purdue. New items this month include:

 

Precision Farming at the Ragged Edge of Ag Technology in the 21st Century - power point slides from a presentation at the U.S. Ag Communicators Conference (USACC), Washington, D.C., July 26. - Among other things this presentation summarizes our best estimates of adoption of precision agriculture technology worldwide

 

Precision Agriculture Profitability Review - This report summarizes the results of 133 studies of the profitability of precision agriculture. Of those studies 63% report positive net returns to precision farming. (Link to report)

 

We invite your feedback on the newsletter or any other SSMC activity. Please contact us at SSMC@agad.purdue.edu.

 

In particular, this month we invite comment on the worldwide adoption estimates presented at the USACC and the profitability reports in the literature review. Do the adoption estimates fit experience in your area? For our international readers, do you have updated yield monitor or VRT adoption estimates for your country?

 

We expect the precision agriculture profitability review to be an on-going SSMC activity, but we need your help to get it right. Have we missed an important study of the profitability of precision agriculture? Have we misunderstood the results of some economic research? Let us know. We plan to update the review every six months.