According to a study on precision agriculture conducted by the Assn. of Equipment Manufacturers, the American Soybean Assn., Crop-Life America and the National Corn Growers Assn., the environmental benefit of precision ag technology fuel efficiencies is similar to taking 200,000 cars off the road every year.

I step carefully out of the passenger side of our rental car and into the humid 80-degree weather. We’re at Sydenstricker Nobbe Partners’ St. Charles, Mo., location, one of their 27 John Deere stores across Missouri and Illinois.

After 5 years of dealers reporting declining aftermarket precision sales, in the 2021 Precision Farming Dealer Benchmark Study, 46% of dealers said their precision products are being sold as aftermarket sales vs. 40% in last year’s study.

The results of the ninth annual Precision Farming Dealer benchmark study — with contributions from dozens of farm equipment dealers, input retailers and independent precision companies — show that nearly three-fourths of dealers are forecasting revenue growth from precision to be up at least 2% in 2021, despite inventory challenges.

Rural broadband connectivity plays a major role in precision farming reliability, and recent spectrum acquisitions by John Deere hint the company could be looking to create dedicated wireless networks for its users.

The Precision Farming Dealer 2020 Benchmark Study showed several shifts in dealers’ expectations for their future revenue. Topping the list of revenue sources considered important for growth was application technology hardware, reversing its 3-year downward trend.

This year has shown interesting new developments in market sentiments, with dealers continuing to slowly move away from hardware and steer sharply toward data management for future revenue, according to the seventh annual Precision Farming Dealer Benchmark Study.