ABSTRACT

Producers can benefit both economically and environmentally from proper goal setting and technology choice in irrigated cotton production. Efficiencies gained from adopting technology and management goals are addressed by analyzing differences in precision farming and whole-field farming technology with respect to yields, net present value of returns above nitrogen and water costs (NPVR), and nitrogen application levels under both a yield and profit maximizing management goal.

Currently, agronomic recommendations for producers only consider yield maximization as a goal. Because yield maximization is not necessarily consistent with profit maximization, errors in application recommendations may be compounded under precision farming practices where decisions are made on smaller subunits of the field. Results suggest that profit maximization as a goal outperforms yield maximization in terms of NPVR regardless of technology choice. This indicates profit maximizing management goals with no technology return more NPVR than precision farming technology under a yield maximizing management strategy. However, precision farming increases NPVR by $20.87/acre as compared to whole-field farming when maximizing profit, indicating that maximizing profits under precision farming is the most profitable scenario.