It’s a currently unanswerable question: How large, exactly, is the precision agriculture market?
As Dr. Jim Budzynski, agribusiness strategist and conference committee co-chair of the 2016 PrecisionAg Vision Conference, notes on PrecisionAg.com, the direct financial impact of precision farming could range from $500 million to $3 billion.
But this obscures the larger picture. “There is not one single element of inputs or equipment which will not be impacted by the development of precision agriculture,” Budzynski writes. “In a $60 billion total market for inputs and equipment, it’s not an exaggeration to project that literally tens of billions of dollars of sales could be directly impacted by precision ag and its development.”
More the reason to attend the PrecisionAg Vision Conference, October 18-20, in Phoenix, AZ, he says. Among the questions that will be addressed are: How is precision agriculture likely to change the industry? Who will “drive this truck,” and who will be run over? What can we learn from other industries? Which technologies will be transformative? And, when is all this likely to happen?