Smart Farming Has Big Impact On U.S. Farms, And There’s Room for More
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(Lori Hays; Data via AEM)
Smart farming technologies, like smart irrigation and targeted spraying systems, are helping farms reduce water use, burn less fuel and optimize fertilizer and pesticide applications. Those gains have led to a 5% increase in overall crop production in the U.S. in just the last five years.
That’s all according to newly released data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturer’s (AEM) “The Benefits of Precision Ag In The U.S.” report. You can read the full white paper study here.
“The overarching message is precision ag enables farmers to maximize use of their inputs,” says Austin Gellings, senior director of agricultural services, AEM. “We’re maximizing every drop of what we’re putting on our crops and on our soil, and I think that’s a very powerful message.”
Gellings found two specific aspects of the study results most compelling:
U.S. farms have achieved an overall 5% reduction in annual water usage by adopting smart farming technologies like smart irrigation systems and soil moisture sensors. Gellings says the savings equates to about 824,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of fresh water saved. It takes about 5 million standard 16 oz. bottled waters to fill just one Olympic-size swimming pool, he adds.
Farmers who adopt targeted smart spraying application systems, like John Deere’s See & Spray and CNH Industrial’s SenseApply, can reduce America’s overall annual herbicide usage up to 55% if full adoption of the technology is achieved. The study defines full adoption as 90% of the total number of active farms in the U.S.
“We also found potential for an additional 6% increase in annual crop production with higher precision technology adoption rates,” he says. “It’s clear these technologies show almost unlimited potential in reducing inputs while increasing our output.
“[Technology is] a tool in the toolbox that helps our farmers step up to the challenges they face every single day, like they’ve always done. Our farmers always find a way to meet the challenge at hand. They are always going to innovate and find a way.”
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The next big thing?
For Gellings, who grew up on the family farm in Wisconsin, daydreaming about the next big technology breakthrough for ag — something truly revolutionary along the lines of how smart spraying has impacted pesticide applications — gets him fired up. He says he can only imagine what his grandfather would say if he knew you could put a camera on a spray boom and only target the weeds as you drove 15 mph through the field.
“In 5 years, will there be a new technology like that, that revolutionizes the way we’re doing things and in a way that we never thought possible? That’s what’s exciting when I think about all the innovation that’s happening in agriculture,” he says. “We’re in this technology boom, and I can almost guarantee there will be another groundbreaking technology that don’t exist today that will come along and fundamentally change the way we farm.”
The updated study findings (the original study data was published back in 2020) were released in collaboration with the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, CropLife America and National Corn Growers Association. Kearney, a global management consulting firm, had a team of project management professionals and subject matter experts to assist AEM in executing the study update.
