Precision agriculture simplifies acreage reporting for farmers

This year’s July 15 deadline for reporting crop acres to the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and crop insurance providers put many farmers, who found themselves still in the field harvesting wheat and planting double-crop soybeans, in a crunch to get their acres in on time. The process was considerably less stressful for farmers who used precision agriculture technology to help them save time with the process, while improving accuracy and reducing paperwork.

“A lot of the guys already have the precision monitors in the cab that track planting acres and map everything in the field,” said Bennett Musselman with Leist Mercantile. “Now we’re going to utilize the data that’s coming out of those monitors.”

By importing planting data directly from a monitor through the cloud or a USB drive, crop insurance agents can prepare acreage reports with far less manual entry.

“The farmer doesn’t have to fill out all that paperwork,” Musselman said.… Continue reading