Analyzing Montana Agriculture growth through the adoption of Precision Technologies

Increasing efficiency and sustainability are two major impacts farmers expected to get by using precision agriculture technologies. To analyze the status of agricultural growth, it is good to find out the level of technology adoption, the main restriction to adoption, what the best way to deliver the required information to stockholder are, and the next planned step in the practice of precision agriculture technologies. In this study, we used the survey data to determine the status of precision agriculture adoption among Montana farmers and find the best way to deliver the required knowledge to producers. More than 70 % of the participants in this survey were educated in agricultural science areas. 72% of them have already used precision agriculture technologies, and 21% of the rest plan to use these technologies as they believe using the technologies increases yield, reduces cost and increases efficiency by at least 3%. GPS receiver and soil properties mapping are two technologies that have been used most (~90%). Although a significant amount of the crop in MT was selected as Pulse and wheat/Barely (45%), the least used technology was reported as a protein measurement sensor (17%). Lack of knowledge, lack of capital, and satisfaction with available methods were the main reasons NOT to use technologies. We dug deeper to find the relationship between these reasons, which was all tied to not having enough knowledge and waiting to see others succeed with new technologies and production methods. So, scientists and extension agents need to offer effective training through favorite learning styles selected by farmers and producers; in-person workshops (74%) and visual training and newsletters (20%), or even radio talk and podcasts (6%).