Rabobank is forecasting that median Midwest corn farmers will be working with a margin of about 4% during the next 4-5 years. This is “unacceptable” and means they will need to increase their efficiency while continuing to cut costs, Kenneth Zuckerberg told attendees of the 2018 Precision Farming Dealer Summit in January.

The first-ever self-propelled round hay baler is expected to revolutionize haying operations for big producers.

Mixing and matching precision farming equipment and components can, in many cases, produce a superior system for some operations. On the other hand, compatibility issues with such systems have been known to create major headaches for precision farming technicians whose job it is to make them operate properly.

The “precision placement of chemicals” and “consistent application within a targeted coverage” area that Ken Giles spoke of 5 years ago is a reality today, and is often referred to as “site-specific management” or, in some cases, “variable-rate application.

There’s just no winning with weeds. If we don’t kill them, they’ll choke out our crops and devastate yields. In earlier days, we removed them by labor intensive hoeing and cultivating. More recently we started spraying herbicides to control them. Unfortunately, this unwanted vegetation figured out how to beat the most common of the weed killers being used, leaving us with as big of a problem, we had before we started spraying.

Dr. Tom Krill defines precision farming as a management concept that recognizes variability within the soil environment and maximizes economic agricultural production while minimizing environmental impact for a specific location. And to evaluate it’s effectiveness, precision farming must have measurable objectives.

As much as I’ve enjoyed visiting with our readers on this page during the past few months, you’ll have a new face to look at starting with the next issue of Precision Farming Dealer

Considering how rapidly precision farming is penetrating row-crop farming, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that its impact is touching all areas of agriculture. But precision farming for gardeners?