Two Thirds of Large Crop Farms Use Precision Agriculture Technology, Says Report

Some 68% of large crop farms use precision agriculture technology that generates information that aids decision-making by operators, such as yield monitors, yield maps, and soil maps, said the USDA on Tuesday. The annual “Farms and Ranches at a Glance” report showed higher-volume farms are heavy users of the technology, notwithstanding earlier reports showing a low usage rate by farmers nationwide.

Large operators said they adopted precision agriculture (PA) technology to increase yields, reduce input costs, and reduce operator fatigue. By contrast, few small farms employed the technology. Adoption “increases with farm size primarily because larger farms can benefit more from employing these tools than smaller farms,” said the Economic Research Service.

Last year, the USDA reported 27% of crop and livestock farms used at least one form of PA, from yield monitors and drones to robotic milking, an increase of 2 percentage points in two years. The equipment has been available since the 1990s but often is expensive. PA allows row-crop farmers to track production from relatively small plots, rather than by field, and adjust the amount of seed, fertilizer, and other inputs accordingly.

The “farms at a glance” report looked at PA by farm size and found high use among large operators; other reports have viewed adoption by state or by crop. The 2023 Technology Use report, by comparison, said 27% of farms used PA, with rates exceeding 50% in the major grain states.

More than 8 out of 10 U.S. farms have gross cash farm incomes of less than $350,000 a year and rank as “small” farms according to a USDA typology. “Large” farms have incomes above $1 million a year. Mid-size farms fall in between. Gross cash farm income includes revenue from sales of crops and livestock, government payments, other farm-related income, and fees from production contracts. Since the 1970s, the USDA has defined a farm as any place that produced and sold, or could have produced and sold, at least $1,000 in agricultural products in a year. Large farms account for half of the value of agricultural production.

Information-generating technology and auto-steer systems were the most common forms of PA among large farms, used on roughly seven of 10 farms. Variable-rate technology was used on 45%, and drones on 12%. “Robotic milking was adopted by 19% of large-scale farms that produced milk,” said the ERS report. More than half of mid-sized farms used auto-steer or yield monitors, yield maps, and soil maps. Thirteen percent of small farms used yield monitors and similar equipment.

“The motivations underlying farmers’ PA adoption were diverse and broadly consistent with the stated benefits of the technologies. For instance, of the farms that adopted yield monitors, yield maps, or soil maps, many did so to increase yields (55%), reduce purchased input costs (41%), and/or improve soils or reduce environmental impacts (40%),” said the report. “On the other hand, reduced labor time and operator fatigue spurred farmers to adopt PA technologies having substantial labor-saving potential.”

Earlier this year, a congressional report said obstacles to PA adoption, besides cost, included poor internet service and incompatibility of devices.

“Technologies that are relatively easy to use are, in general, adopted more quickly and widely than those that are more complex or require a large investment of farmers’ time and resources,” said the report. “Stakeholders also indicated that data-intensive technologies that require farmers to collect, collate, analyze, and respond to data have a higher barrier to entry and are less widely adopted.” Among corn and soybean farmers, use of auto-steer for tractors and combines was twice as common as their use of soil maps or variable-rate application of fertilizer and seeds.