Posted by JD Seller on February 21, 2016 at 09:02:11 from (208.126.198.123):
The adaptation of digital farming has really took off in the last five years. I maintain that very little of this digital equipment will actually pay for itself. The auto steer and swatch control MIGHT pay back their cost. Yield monitors and varying rate controllers not so much.
Controlling your distance so you have zero overlap or skips is an economic advantage BUT does it pay for the cost of the equipment????
The varying rate technology DOES not pan out cost wise. Example: The cost of doing grid soil sampling negates any advantage. You can apply extra fertilizer matching the cost of the varying rate technology and get a higher over all yield. I have studied the data and it back this up.
Yield monitors fall into this same category. Know what this LAST crop did down to the inch/foot does not help next year's crop that much. The reason being that the weather is a bigger factor after fertility. We can not control nor predict the weather for six weeks let alone six months. So this technology is "neat" but really does not pay for itself.
The biggest waste of money is much of the corn planter stuff. Automatic row shut offs DO pay for them selves. The electric drives units and lots of the other "Precision" stuff do not. You can take "normal" corn planting equipment and get 95-98 percent planting success. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars and maybe raise that 1-2%. With corn prices where they are you can never regain the cost of the improvements.
I think that we are seeing a bunch of second, third, generation farmers playing with the forefather's assets. They will find that their income cushion will not stand the high cost of digital toys with cheap commodity prices. It is going to be the lowest cost producer winning again for several years. So spending thousands of dollars on stuff that does not positively impact income will not work for long.
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