A very short history of precision agriculture

■ The term precision agriculture emerged when yield monitoring was first invented and brought to market.

■ GPS receivers were added to map the sources of the yields, which began to make it possible to manage farmland and zones based on productivity.

■ This very quickly evolved into also mapping soil sampling results and directly tying that type of information to point-specific yield information from a field.

■ After several years, variable rate application of fertilizer emerged.

■ In the mid-2000s, auto-swath technology came on the market, making it possible to turn on and off the different implement sections on application equipment — primarily, sprayers and spreaders. 

■ In the mid-2000s, autosteering systems started to become standard on newer equipment and soon became a key product in the aftermarket. This gave farmers better efficiency and helped provide them more hours of productivity per day. It also allowed them to pay better attention to the equipment and the application that they were set up to do.

■ The combination of swath control and auto guidance greatly accelerated the development of precision agriculture, eventually leading to the monitoring and control of planter equipment.

■ More recently, the trend toward autonomy began, with greater focus on live sensors, including camera imagery.