Tool developed at Montana State aims to help farmers implement new technologies

In the constantly changing environment of precision agriculture, it can be difficult to winnow through the array of available tools and technologies becoming available for use by farmers and ranchers. To help guide those decisions, two faculty members in the Montana State University College of Agriculture have developed a tool for estimating the return on investment associated with one of the most high-impact precision ag resources.

Ricardo Pinto, an assistant professor at MSU’s Northern Agricultural Research Center in Havre, heard from producers that herbicide resistance in weeds was becoming an increasingly intractable problem. New technology such as precision smart sprayers can detect individual weeds in a field and selectively spray them, as well as enable producers to apply specific herbicide blends that are more likely to kill herbicide-resistant plants. But tools like smart sprayers can be expensive, totaling up to $150,000 in some cases.