Study: As Ag Economy Shifts, So Does Technology Use By U.S. Ag Retailers

Editor’s note: The CropLife/Purdue Precision Survey is the longest-running continuous study of precision farming adoption. The 141 agricultural retailer input supplier respondents mostly from the Midwest included cooperatives, independent retailers, and those part of a regional or national chain. Those answering as a farm equipment dealer or consultant in the first question were not allowed to continue further. The results reported are for dealers that identified as primarily working with field crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton, milo, sugar beets, and forages. Dealers that work with specialty crops such as tree fruits and nuts, vegetables, berries, and grapes are analyzed separately. A full report detailing all of the 2022 results will be posted later this summer on the Purdue Digital Agriculture web site.

2022’s Precision Agriculture Dealership Survey shows shifting technology use, concurrent with the dramatic swings in the prices of agricultural products and in the costs of growing crops. Dealers have invested in technology to streamline their logistics, such as fleet management and telemetry. More dealers are planning future customer offerings of variable rate pesticide applications, applying crop inputs with drones, using chlorophyll/greenness sensors, and making soil electrical conductivity (EC) maps. On-farm data is used the most for fertilizer-related decisions, and fertilizer-related offerings continue to provide greater returns than other services. The cost of the technology relative to the value gained in time or inputs mostly determines the return to precision investment. So, when the cost and availability of labor, pesticides, fertilizers, and other inputs as well as crop prices grows faster than the cost of electronics and controllers to manage all that, the case for investment in digital ag can be more readily made.

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Dealers have long used precision technology in their own operations. Eighty-five percent of dealers use autoguidance on their application equipment (Figure 1), and 91% of those who offer precision services use guidance of any type (including manual guidance/light bars). This hasn’t changed much in recent years — and some year-to-year variation of survey results is normal, as survey respondents differ each year. GPS-guided boom section/nozzle controllers on sprayers, which reduce doubling-up and skips, are used at 70% of dealerships and sprayer turn compensation continues to grow, now at 40%. To help with their operational efficiency, and to ensure accurate work, half of dealers are using telemetry to exchange information among applicators or to/from office locations, sharply increasing over the last decade. About half are using GPS fleet management to track the locations of vehicles and guide vehicles to work sites, also up over previous years.

Growing Interest

Over the years there has been an ever-changing mix in the precision products and services dealers offer to their customers. Following a decade of very slow growth, a big upswing in many precision offerings occurred in the decade from around 2011 to 2020 (Figures 2 and 3). More than two thirds of dealers now offer precision soil sampling, yield monitor analysis, satellite or aerial imagery, VRT fertilizer and lime applications, and VRT seeding prescriptions. Lower in adoption but on an upward trajectory is the use of chlorophyll/greenness sensors, a tool directly aimed at fertilizer efficiency, and twice as many dealers say they will be offering this service three years out as are offering it today. Soil EC mapping has been up and down over the years, but 14% of dealers say they will be adding these services in three years. Seed price changes and shortages have not been as acute as with fertilizers and pesticides. The percentage of dealers offering VRT seeding prescriptions has leveled off in the last three years, compared to a substantial upward burst in the four years prior (2013 to 2017), and 7% of dealers plan to add this service by 2022.

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One of the biggest areas of growth anticipated by retailers is high-tech pest management. About a third of dealers now offer VRT pesticide applications, but more than half say they will be doing this in three years. About a quarter of dealers indicate they now use a drone for some pesticide applications, but almost half say they will be doing this in three years (Figure 3). Early in the game are robotic weeding and robotic scouting. Only a few dealers responded that they are offering these now, but 17% and 20% of dealers, respectively, said they would be offering these in three years, by 2025, showing great confidence in their potential (Figure 2). But comparing estimated future use of many practices in past surveys with the actual results three years later, it is common for dealers to overestimate. The interest in precision pest management might be driven by pesticide costs and availability, as well as continued pest resistance issues.

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