In the early days of the Ag Development Funds, Ballard County was the first county to develop a precision ag program. It has since been incorporated statewide into the CAIP ( county ag improvement program). In the last 16 years, Ballard County farmers have been able leverage these funds with their own to incorporate some form of precision ag on almost every acre in crop production in the county. 

In the latest precision ag survey conducted by Tom Miller, Ballard County extension Agent for Ag And Natural Resources, over 80% of the harvested acres use some form of geo referenced harvest data. In 2017, that was just over 70,000 according to NASS. Some form of guidance system from light bar to automatic steering control is used on over 90% of the acres. Many of these acres have multiple trips across the field throughout the season. The biggest payoff has been in the automatic sprayer control and planter control units used across the county. Again, over 90% of the acres sprayed have some form of section control in use. It is estimated by UK College of Ag Economics that savings from these control sections ranged from $2.50 to $6.00 per acre. If we use the mid- point value of $4.25 per acre, many of these acres were sprayed at least 2 times, some of them even more, we are looking at 140,000 acres at $4.25 for a total of over $595,000 per year. This number does not include the environmental impact of using less chemicals on the field due to reduced overlap and misapplication.  

Row controls on the planter units provide one of the easiest benefits to actually see. There are very few square fields in Ballard County, all fields have point rows and waterways and very few straight lines. Savings on seed use of up to 10% are easily attained just by reducing the overlap on point rows. As seed cost continue to increase, this savings becomes much more valuable.  

The introduction and adoption of Precision Ag to the farmers of Ballard County has been a great use of Ag Development Funds. They continue to reap the benefits of the technology year after year from the initial investment. With each new technology incorporated, management skills and information increase, resulting in a level of crop production and efficiency that will rival any production area in the country.   

Photo Tom Miller   2 Row Automatic Shutoff in use - notice the reduced over planting