Although many PA technologies were adopted for reasons related to increasing yields, reducing purchased input costs, or improving environmental quality, other PA technologies were adopted to save on labor time and reduce operator fatigue.
U.S. farmers and ranchers have been increasingly using precision agriculture (PA) technologies to boost their productivity, reduce certain input use and streamline day-to-day management of their operations.
A recent survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service economists K. Lim, J. McFadden, N. Miller and K. Lacy asked farm operators about their use of a wide variety of PA technologies, including:
• Yield monitors - Screens in the cabs of equipment that provide illustrations, typically heat maps, of crop yields that are produced in real time as the crop is harvested, which can then be used to print yield maps of farmers’ fields.
• Soil maps – For analyses of soil samples or information from equipment on sensors, depict variability in the physical and chemical properties (e.g., soil texture, nutrient levels) in farmers’ fields at a spatially detailed level.
• Guidance autosteering – Those systems that rely on satellite signals to automatically steer equipment, such as tractors and harvesters, across a field.
• Variable rate technologies – Those that allow for varying seeding rates or application rates of pesticides and fertilizers across a field in real time.
• Drones - Small, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used to collect field imagery to support various management practices or carry out field operations like pesticide spraying.
• Robotic milking - Automatic milking systems that automate most or all steps of the milking process.
• Wearable livestock technologies – Allow for tracking of livestock animals’ health and behavior (e.g., location, nutrient intake, body temperature, heart rate) for the tracking and monitoring of animal well-being and productivity.
Survey results were published in USDA’s “America’s Farms and Ranches at a Glance: 2024 Edition” report and shared in a recent related webinar hosted by the agency.Technologies that mainly provide information to support operators’ decision-making, such as yield monitors, yield maps, and soil maps, were found to be used on 13 percent of small crop-producing farms but 68 percent of large-scale crop-producing farms. ERS researchers said that similar to other PA technologies, low usage rates of these technologies by small farms were driven by retirement farms, of which 5 percent adopted, and low sales farms (GCFI less than $150,000) that had a 9-percent adoption rate.
Guidance autosteering systems on tractors, harvesters, and other equipment were used on 9 percent of small farms, 52 percent of midsize farms, and 70 percent of large-scale crop-producing farms. The adoption of these systems, as with several other PA technologies, increases with farm size primarily because larger farms can benefit more from employing these tools than smaller farms.
Variable rate technology (VRT) was used moderately across the crop farm size distribution, with adoption rates of 5 percent for small farms, 32 percent for midsized farms, and 45 percent for large-scale farms. The scale, structure, and soil variability of farms play a large role in explaining these usage patterns.
The adoption of drones was quite limited, plateauing at 12 percent of large-scale, crop-producing family farms and 13 percent of nonfamily farms.
Precision livestock farming use was low but mixed across farm sizes. Robotic milking was adopted on 19 percent of large-scale farms that produced milk. The adoption rates for wearable technologies on farms with livestock commodity sales ranged from 1 percent of small farms to 12 percent of large-scale farms.
The motivations underlying farmers’ PA adoption were diverse and broadly consistent with the stated benefits of the technologies, said USDA. For instance, of the farms that adopted yield monitors, yield maps, or soil maps, many did so to increase yields (55 percent), reduce purchased input costs (41 percent), and/or improve soils or reduce environmental impacts (40 percent).
These same three factors were among the most common for VRT, although a greater share of VRT adopters were motivated by reducing purchased input costs (62 percent).
On the other hand, reduced labor time and operator fatigue spurred farmers to adopt PA technologies having substantial labor-saving potential. Half of all farms on which guidance autosteering systems were used indicated that saving labor time was a reason for adoption, while the share of farms with robotic milking indicating this as a reason was 77 percent. Likewise, reduced operator fatigue was a decision factor for 64 percent of farms using guidance autosteering and 41 percent of those using robotic milking.
While 52 percent of farms using wearable livestock technologies tended to indicate yield increases as a reason for adoption, many adopting farms were also influenced by broadband internet access (38 percent).
Although high-speed internet is not necessary for some wearable devices that collect data locally and transmit smaller amounts of data to a central hub, it is necessary if large amounts of information need to be sent virtually for real-time analysis and decision making. However, farms indicating broadband access as a reason to adopt these technologies also tended to indicate other reasons for adoption, such as to increase yields, USDA said.
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