Ninety-three dealers and retailers — mostly from the Midwest — participated in the 2025 CropLife/Purdue Precision Adoption Survey, which has been conducted at least every other year since 1996. I always look forward to the annual breakdown of the survey as it serves as a good barometer for the state of precision ag.
Bruce Erickson from Purdue Univ. and James Lowenberg-DeBoer from Harper Adams Univ. shared some of their initial takeaways from this year’s survey. At first glance, there’s nothing jaw-dropping, but here are a few data points that stand out:
- When asked what services they aren’t offering now, but plan on offering in the next 3 years, 19% of dealers/retailers said they will add machine vision weed detection on sprayers, 17% will add VRT for custom pesticide applications and 15% will add profit/cost mapping.
- 84% currently offer VRT fertilizer application services, 62% grid/zone soil sampling, 53% yield monitor/data analysis and 52% VRT seeding prescriptions.
- 27% currently offer UAV/drone services to apply crop inputs, while 10% plan on adding the service within the next 3 years.
- 55% said overall farm income is the top adoption barrier for their customers. The second biggest barrier picked (from a list of 7 options) was the costs of precision services being greater than the benefits many receive.
Dealers were also asked about the factors holding them back from offering more precision services. They were given 11 options to choose from. Most agreed that the No. 1 challenge is finding employees who can deliver precision services.
“Prior to a decade ago, this factor wasn’t on top, but it has been since 2021,” Erickson and Lowenberg-DeBoer said in their analysis. “Certainly, this has also been a concern for many businesses in and out of agriculture.”
Other top challenges include equipment costs needed to provide precision services and fees not being high enough to make precision services profitable, which have both been among the top 3 challenges — with one exception — every year for the past decade.
“On the opposite end of the spectrum, ‘lack of manufacturer support for precision services’ was always the lowest barrier going back to when the question was first asked. Dealers feel strongly they get good company support,” Erickson and Lowenberg-DeBoer said.
A complete breakdown of the 2025 survey will be available later this year. In the meantime, what are some of the biggest precision trends and challenges you’re noticing in 2025? Let me know at [email protected].
