Page 220 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
P. 220

  CORE VALUE: EXCELLENCE
BOYLE FAMILY FARMS GOES HIGH-TECH
Before Precision Ag was even a term, Eric Wavra was out pulling soil samples as an agronomist for Wilco Farmers Co-op in the Willamette Valley. Grid sampling was the very beginning of what would
“We would go out and pull samples and develop variability across the field,” says Wavra, SITECH’s Ag Technology sales manager (2019). “Then we’d input our findings into pieces of equipment to spray fertilizer on a field at, say two hundred pounds per acre. And we’d vary the rate from zero to five hundred pounds based on what the soil already had in it. That way we were using our fertil-
izer more efficiently.”
Today, Precision Ag encompasses anything using technology to increase the efficiency of the farming process. If you put auto steer on a tractor, that’s Precision Ag. If you use a drone to take pictures of your field, that’s Precision Ag. If you irrigate with smart technology, that’s Precision Ag. It’s high-tech farming. Since the late 1990s, technology has changed the face of agriculture more than all the other innovations of all the previous millennia combined. Back to the beginnings of civilization.
become known as Precision Ag.
2
 Challenger tractor with Precision Ag working in the field, in 2010
2 Precision Ag is part of Peterson’s high-tech company known as SITECH. See the full story in CH16 SITECH, pg 257.
218 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG
    























































































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