High tech in precision agriculture

Farming has gone high-tech. Thanks to innovative technologies that are extremely accurate, cost-effective, and user-friendly, a method of farm management called precision agriculture has been widely adopted by large and small farmers alike since its introduction in the early 1990s. Before then, soil surveys and topographic maps did not provide enough information to be of much use in the field. Today, the primary tools of precision agriculture—the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)—enable farmers to collect, record, and analyze information about their land in order to maximize yield and reduce costs.

Learn more in this video about these technologies!

Thanks to PBS Learning Media for this resource.