Reevaluating Farming Costs
Ag tech’s money saving role in current and future farm trends
Scroll Down to Read
By Lauren Milligan
Contributor
Ag tech’s role in farm production is increasing each year due to pressure for growers to use sustainable practices to reduce agrochemical loads and alleviate challenges like labor shortages and supply chain disruptions.
The PrecisionAg Institute, in cooperation with the American Soybean Association (ASA), conducted a recent study of soybean growers to gain insight about the return on investment (ROI) for precision farming tools and technology.
The survey showed that, for growers who use technology as intended, there is rapid payback. In some cases, it is accomplished within one season.
FarmProgress reported a 35%-40% savings in nitrogen (N) applications seen by a U.S. grower who used remote-sensing tools in variable-rate application to help monitor residual soil nutrients.
As ag tech helps growers to closely monitor farm-production management decisions, the inevitable is finding cost savings. Growers who use ag tech report an average savings of about 15% on several crop inputs such as seed, fertilizer, and chemicals.
Libelium, an ag tech company based in Zaragoza, Spain, developed a universal IoT gateway for an automatic sensor connection to send to the cloud, called Libelium One, for helping growers make educated decisions for reducing fertilizer and water.
“Although it depends on each case (weather, crop type, geographic area), Libelium’s IoT solutions for agriculture achieve savings of up to 40% in the use of fertilizers and 30% of water, thanks to the collection of data and the issuance of actionable insights to the farmer simplified,” said Nuria Muro, Marketing and Communications Director for Libelium. “Having corrective data on water use, soil quality, and plant growth is crucial to restoring the land to its natural vitality. For instance, if soil fertility is low, farmers can use corrective data to adjust their crop rotation or fertilizer management practices.”
Savings on inputs often pays for the technology within a year for a large cropping operation and two to three years for smaller operations. Growers are increasingly using precision tools to conduct their own comparisons on their own ground.
Companies like Libelium are working to give farmers easy access to information to make quick decisive decisions. Companies like Agri Technovation and Mezzanine, who partnered to create MyFarmWeb, an ecosystem for farmers, agricultural service providers, and IoT venders, enable access to the digital marketplace.
“The interactive, cloud-based platform could be accessed through any browser, for storing, visualizing, and comparing all types of maps, geographic and IoT agricultural data,” says Dicky Carstens, CEO of MyFarmWeb.
The platform collates data from third-party sources and overlays data layers so growers can choose relevant data to make more informed decisions.
Carstens said that his platform helps growers to use an “activity tracking module, weather services, and telemetry tracking of the spraying equipment to plan, execute, monitor, and report on activities relating to chemical applications. Should the objective be to save on chemical spending, the farmer would be able to monitor this via the platform.”
What does the increase in use of precision ag tech mean for the agrochemical industry? Derek Oliphant, Co-Founder of AgbioInvestor, said it shouldn’t deter crop protection companies.
“It is our view that much of the volume loss through increased use of more precise application technologies could be offset by associated higher values, including advanced formulation technologies or higher margins related to lower levels of competitiveness in the space,” said Oliphant. “For example, additional authorizations are required for drone application in most countries, which would come with associated costs, thereby leading to higher cost of use.” •
BotTastic Adobe.stock.com
Photo of Dicky Carstens courtesy of Agri Technovations