Biennial Ag Tech Use Survey
Ag Tech Survey
More American farmers and ag professionals are relying on personal technologies to do their work.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service has released the findings of its 2021 Agriculture Technology Use Survey. Those in the southeast have recently been among the most active adopters.
The findings for the 2021 survey show...
Peters: ” Nationally, 82% of farms have access to the internet. That was an increase of 7% over 2 years ago. In fact, no state had a decrease in internet access. We did see large gains in several states; Tennessee, Illinois, West Virginia, Alabama. Those were our biggest increases. We found 29% of farms using the internet to purchase agricultural inputs. That was an increase from 2019 of 5%.
Adam Peters with NASS says the Technology Use Survey has been conducted every other year since 1997 and the changes have come fast and to a broad number of ag professionals.
Additionally, 21% of all farms are now using the internet to market their products or operations. That was a 2% jump from 2019.
For the first time, the survey measured farmers’ use of precision agricultural tools in their operations.
Peters: “The highest responses were from North and South Dakota, in excess of 50%. On average we saw about a quarter of all farms using precision agriculture in some form.”
Half of all connected farms used broadband and 70% had access through a cellular data plan.
