Anticipation mixed with a little anxiety as to how soon autonomous vehicles will be roaming farm fields in North America continues to build. But this week, Raven Autonomy announced it is accepting pre-orders for its first commercially-available autonomous system.

According to the USDA’s Farm and Land in Farms report published earlier this year, the average U.S. farm size has increased about 10 acres from 2012-2019, to 444. But the number of farms has decreased by more than 86,000 during that same span.

The outlook supports 93% of dealers view precision farming systems as one of their best bets to remain the same or improve unit sales in 2021, according to Ag Equipment Intelligence’s 2021 Dealer Business Outlook & Trends report. But digging deeper into each of the major manufacturers outlook for best bets to improve units sales in 2021, not all of them place the same priority on precision in the coming year.

For the second year in a row, precision farming ranked high on dealers’ list of best bets for improving unit sales, according to Ag Equipment Intelligence’s 2021 Dealer Business Outlook & Trends report. While the category lost its first place slot from last year’s report, it still ranked second among 21 different areas, with more than 93% of dealers betting on precision systems to remain the same or improve unit sales in 2021.

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.

We recently shared some perspective in this segment on what the dealership of 2030 could look like, with a major emphasis on precision technologies like robotics and hyper-specialized services. But what are dealers forecasting as their best bets for growing precision revenue in the next 3 years?

Tapping into external precision expertise can provide efficient and effective avenues to improve customer service for farm equipment dealerships. But the chaotic schedules of precision managers don’t always allow for coordinated sessions, especially nowadays.

Forecasting how farm equipment dealerships will operate in 10 years allows for a combination of creative and critical outlook. With ongoing generational transition on many U.S. farms, relationships between customer and dealers are evolving.

Precision farming specialists are often called upon to be versatile, adaptable problem-solvers. But as the next generation of decision-maker moves into farm management roles, dealerships are also transitioning how they meet the evolving expectations of customers.

Successfully selling precision farming services is an annual objective for many farm equipment dealerships. Getting farm customers to pay for software updates, in-field support and hardware installations is a challenge. But what about connecting customers’ ag tech and equipment investments with a long-term business plan for their farm operation?