12-15 How helpful is predictive planting to individual farmers and the agricultural industry? Explain your answer. Like many other businesses, farming is being reshaped by information technology. Many tractors and combines today are guided by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellitebased navigation systems. The GPS computer receives signals from earth-orbiting satellites to track each piece of equipment’s location and where it has gone.

The system issues instructions for hoses to deliver precise amounts of fertilizer right into the grooves cut by the tiller. The system helps steer the equipment, so farmers are able to monitor progress on iPads and other tablet computers in their tractor cabs.

Placing seed and fertilizer together with this level of precision means farmers need to use fewer loads of fertilizer, potentially saving an individual farmer tens of thousands of dollars.

Now big agricultural companies like Monsanto and Dupont want to do more. Since adjustments in planting depth or the distance between crop rows can make a big difference in crop yields, these companies want their computers to analyze the data generated during this computerized planting work to show farmers how to further increase their crop output. This practice is also known as predictive planting. Proponents say prescriptive planting will spark an agricultural revolution rivalling the introduction of mechanized tractors in the first half of the 20th century and the rise of genetically modified seeds in the 1990s.