Source:
CropLife magazine
Willoughby, OH -- The year 2025 finds precision agriculture at a crossroads of several maturing technologies with some newer ones in the mix, all looking for their fit with farmers and their crop input dealers.
In last year's survey and the resulting 2024 article, we focused on the promise of what this newer class could bring to crop production and ag retail's role. To read the results
click here>
In contrast the "classic precision agriculture" set -- which for the most part originated in the 1990s and included precision soil testing, VRT fertilizer, and lime applications, variable seeding rates, imagery, and yield monitors -- had for two decades mostly ridden an upward (but often bumpy) wave of technology adoption. Autoguidance and section controllers came along in the early 2000s and caught on relatively quickly. While some in that classic set are still finding their place, dealers are optimistic about machine vision for weed control and other precision pest management, crop inputs applied with UAV/drones, and robotics for soil sampling, scouting, and mechanical weeding.
Dealer Use, Offerings of Precision Ag
Dealers are using autoguidance on 85% of their custom acres, and sprayer boom or nozzle control on 76% of their custom acres. Fifty-three percent of dealers are using telemetry to exchange information, and 48% using GPS fleet management for vehicle tracking and logistics, both up from years past (not shown).
Dealers were asked what precision/digital products they are currently offering to their farmer customers, and if not now, will they be offering in three years? The greatest numbers planning to add are for machine vision weed detection on sprayer (now at just 4% but 19% will add, Figure 1), VRT for custom pesticide applications (40% now and 17% will add), and profit/cost mapping (24% now and 15% will add). Other areas anticipated for growth by dealers are in VRT irrigation prescriptions and crop inputs applied with a UAV/drone.
In 2025, fewer dealers indicated they were offering some of the long-time staples of precision agriculture, including precision soil sampling, yield monitors, and other data analysis, VRT for their custom fertilizer applications, VRT seeding prescriptions, and imagery (Figures 2 and 3). We have observed this downward trend in these offerings in the last few years, as noted in our 2024 article.
Respondents are different every year, so a few points up or down in any one year doesn't always signal a trend. With uncertainty in the ag retail business and farmer customers worried about tight crop margins, dealers may be focusing on what has been their reliable income streams -- fertilizer, seed, and pesticide sales, and custom applications. A lower percentage of dealers offering these dovetails with similar, but mostly less dramatic decreases reported with these technologies on farms in their trade areas (Figures 4 and 5).
Farmer Use of Precision Ag
Dealers report on the percentage of acres in their trade area of farmers using certain digital ag technologies. Most acres use guidance, a combine yield monitor, section controllers, precision soil testing, and planter controllers, as has been the case for the last few years (Figure 4).
But despite being available for two decades or more, dealers report most farmers are not using imagery (whether that is satellite, aerial, or drone), not applying fertilizers using variable rate technology, or VRT liming (Figures 4 and 5). Precision soil testing with farmers is going down, as are variable seeding rates and variable hybrid placement.
As technologies reach market maturity, it is logical that the gains in adoption would level off. But many that are leveling/lowering are far from full market penetration.
There are numerous theories and examples of product life cycles, where for most there is an initial period of expectation and growth, sometimes a period of disillusionment and stagnation, then possibly rising again with eventual widespread acceptance or decline. Some precision agriculture technologies are highly interdependent. For instance, variable rate fertilizer applications rely on an informed set of information that could come from soil maps, yield maps, soil tests, tissue tests, imagery, soil EC, and more, and that can com-plicate implementation. Some are not much interdependent -- guidance and section controllers do their work without needing much information other than GPS coordinates.
Barriers to Expansion of Precision Ag
If digital agriculture is today's technology wave that will increase productivity, allow more efficient inputs, and reduce environmental consequences of farming, what holds back farmers from doing more?
As picked from a list of seven factors, overall farm income stands out as the greatest impediment for farmers adopting precision agriculture in 2025, with 55% of dealers agreeing or strongly agreeing with that concept. Going back a decade, it has always been the single biggest issue, and also the one that fluctuates the most. The second biggest issue in 2025, and with one exception always second in the last decade, is the costs of precision services being greater that the benefits many receive.
To read the entire article
click here.