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USDA issues precision ag use report

A new report says precision ag systems are increasingly being used for major U.S. crops and many farmers are seeing a profit boost.

The USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) says it studied data from 1996 to 2013.

It found yield monitors that produce data for GPS-based mapping are the most widely adopted technology, used on about half of corn and soybean farms.  Guidance or auto-steer systems are used on about a third of those farms.  GPS-based yield mapping is used on one-fourth of them. Soil mapping using GPS and VRT varies from 16 to 26 percent of farms.

The larger the corn farm, 3-thousand acres or more, the larger the use of mapping and guidance systems – reaching about 80 percent.

Hired labor costs are lowered with all three precision ag technologies. The boost in profits for farmers using the technologies ranges from one to three percent.