Enhance farmer profitability AND water quality by combining precision ag, conservation and business planning tools.
This project helped farmers and agronomists identify areas of fields that could be more profitable if used with conservation practices using comparative field images.The Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance (IAWA) and five partners used new business planning tools in the North Raccoon, Des Moines, Boone, Lake Red Rock, Floyd, Nishnabotna, Skunk, Upper Cedar, and Middle Cedar River basins to achieve increased farmer profitability and improved water quality. Partners were Heartland Co-op, AgSolver, Iowa Soybean Association Environmental Programs and Services and Pheasants Forever, with the assistance of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Low-yielding money robbers are hiding in every field. Every farmer knows them—the wet spots turned to dried mud or weeds by harvest, the less obvious patches where a yield monitor plunges as the combine moves across them. Now farmers and conservation experts have an eye on those spots as potential areas to improve profitability and water quality.
Until a few years ago, Tim Recker who farms near Arlington, Iowa, wasn’t considering using a more precise way of farming. Now he’s part of a trend toward using precision technology to analyze exactly how much money is lost or made from each acre. In some cases, that leads to increased conservation practices for increased profitability.
These types of comparative field images are helping farmers improve profitability. Precision ag technology shows field profit loss (red) and profitable (green) areas that farmers use to evaluate management options.
