The Association of Equipment Manufacturers has released a report showing the significant benefits of precision agriculture in the U.S. Austin Gellings, senior director of agricultural services with AEM, talks about the findings and goals behind the report.
“The goal was really to bring the ag community together to help quantify and tell the story about the role that precision agriculture and precision agricultural technologies can play, both in on-farm conservation and tell the story about the role that technology plays in that, but also then tie that to the increased efficiency that we see from these technologies, the ROI that can bring a farmer as well, and kind of pair those two together – how efficiency and conservation kind of go hand in hand.”
He said precision agriculture continues to deliver results, with productivity climbing six to seven percent. That allows farmers to grow more crops on less land.
We found a whole bunch of numbers like that through increased efficiency and use of herbicides by needing to use 54 million pounds less of herbicides as a result of these technologies, and the same goes for fertilizers.”