Precision agriculture (PA) can be an intimidating topic of discussion. High-tech terms like drones, robots, sensors, geo-mapping and big data come up when discussing precision ag. Not only are those concepts misunderstood and complex, they all come with price tags—often large ones. All this complexity and expense has led to the relatively slow adoption of […]
Water is the scarcest nutrient in dry-land agriculture. Even if you aren’t growing in a semi-arid or sub-humid region, water is the most critical input that many farmers struggle to properly manage. All other input decisions should hinge on it.
For years, the inherent risk of running land-forming operations with GPS has been that drift is a possibility. However, the wasted time that happens with drift is far less likely than the more common delays that happen with laser technology due to factors like wind and dust. Still, downtime is still a big concern when using GPS-based systems, which have long been unable to overcome the increasing magnitude and repeated occurrence of drift.
