Since the 1990s, precision agriculture has aimed to revolutionize farming by providing growers with detailed information about their crops and the technology to utilize that data effectively.
Many advancements have been made, enhancing precision in agriculture. Modern tractors can steer themselves using GPS, and farmers can now adjust the rate of seed and fertilizer application. Advances have also been seen in crop genetics and weed management.
“The only thing we have not advanced is the sensor,” said Pablo Sobron, founder of Impossible Sensing. “The ability to see things that matter in both the plants, the soil, and the roots.”
Sobron and his team of scientists in St. Louis are now developing the second prototype of a sensor designed to be mounted on the back of a planting machine. This sensor will allow farmers to see real-time information about nutrient levels, soil health, water conditions, and other factors affecting individual plants as they drive through their fields.
“Our belief is that having more precise knowledge of which areas of the farm need more or less fertilizer will help farmers apply the right amount,” Sobron said. “The real value and need here is to provide insights and knowledge, prescribing what to do and when.”
This data should help farmers make decisions that not only improve their profits but also reduce the overuse of fertilizers and chemicals, and make irrigation more targeted.
However, Sobron acknowledged that the advancements in precision agriculture haven’t fully transformed farming yet.
“It’s not living up to the hype it was marketed with,” he said.
It will likely be years before promising tools, like lasers, are adopted on thousands, let alone millions, of farming acres.
“Experimentation is a risk,” said Bill Leigh, a farmer in Marshall County, Illinois, who grows about 2,200 acres of corn and soybeans with his brother. Since starting in the early 1980s, Leigh has gradually added more precision tools to his equipment, which have helped him plant seeds and apply fertilizer, herbicides, and fungicides more efficiently.
But this change has been slow, he explained.
“It’s not a jump in with both feet, it’s a process,” Leigh said. “It’s just too expensive and there’s too much at risk to take that flying leap and realize there’s not a high jump pit at the end, it’s a piece of concrete.”
New farm technology can cost more than $100,000 in some cases. Leigh is willing to make such investments if he sees an economic return. This financial consideration is crucial because many farms operate on slim margins.
According to BioSTL Agrifood Director Chad Zimmerman, there’s still a gap between the new technology available and the farmers who use it because many can’t afford to try something new on all their fields.
“We can’t be asking them to take on more risk, to just take a decrease in their profit to accomplish somebody else’s goal,” Zimmerman said.
This puts pressure on companies to prove their precision ag tech really delivers. Many are working on this, noted Alison Doyle, associate director at the Iowa State University Research Park.
“A lot of the ag companies are positioning themselves more in the tech space than in traditional ag,” Doyle said.
Labor is a major factor. There are fewer farm workers today than in the past, and today’s farms are much larger, Doyle added.
“When you have an operation that large, where commodity prices and input prices are where they are, you’re looking for a tiny bit of margin wherever you can find it,” she said. “So these precision tools become necessary.”
Precision Farming
