How is Precision Ag helping tell our ag story?

Happy Birthday America! First of all I would like to thank anyone who has served or is serving our country in the military! May God bless you and your families! You are truly hero's to the rest of us!

I have been contemplating over the last half of the year about how fast we need to adapt to precision ag, and I have concluded that we need to do it as quick as we possibly can! While working for a coop we deal with all types of growers, those who are on the cutting edge with technology, and those who use almost none. However, precision ag is becoming a way of life for many of the farms around the area, especially those operated by younger farmers.

Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of discussion about the need to double the production we now have by the year 2030 to keep up with the demand for food/feed/fuel needed by the ever increasing world population. I believe that precision ag is going to play a huge role in this. To do this we are going to be using less fertilizer on less acres, and expecting much more productivity on the land we do have all while being more and more scrutinized for our farming practices and the effects of agriculture on the environment. While technology will not eliminate the scrutiny we receive, I believe that it can greatly help us tell the story of ag and how farmers are the first environmentalists. Just a few of the technologies I am talking about are variable rate fertility and seeding, as well as yield mapping, and many others, some that are probably not even thought of yet.

In my point of view, the use of precision ag will be driven by grower demand and requirement of use by regulatory agencies. We already have programs that require variable rate fertilizer applications, paired with soil tests, tissue tests, and stalk nitrate testing. As with most government programs, these include quite a few hoops to jump through, and some of the ideas look good in theory but in reality are not quite as clear-cut.

Probably the biggest driving force for precision ag will be grower demand. With the rising costs of seed/fertilizer/land rent/machinery/etc there is much more demand to make every input as efficient as possible through the use of auto-steer, variable rate technology, telemetry, computer software, hardware, and the need to make all of the different technologies work together.

I believe that social media will be one of our biggest tools we can use to get our story out to the non-agriculture public. The non-agriculture public is going to have their ideas about agriculture told to them by someone or some news story, and this information might be completely wrong, so I believe that is our responsibility to tell our own story to make sure it is told right!

I am thinking that what I would like to focus this blog on is the use of precision ag and how it can improve our efficiency, as well as how we can get the message of modern agriculture out to the general public, showing them where their food comes from and the great measures that we go to to make sure that the food supply is safe. I would appreciate any comments or questions or ideas on how to administer this blog better or ideas on what to write about.

@JasonJenks88 on Twitter