"My philosophy on farming is I don't want to be a larger farmer," states Pete Carson. "I want to maintain and improve profits on what I already have."

Carson, who farms 1,500 acres of wheat, sugar beets and potatoes, has joined the high tech ago of agriculture where he calls on the tools of Precision Agriculture to monitor crop inputs and yields with pinpoint accuracy.

In a few short years, Carson has gone from startup to advanced, learning to use new tools, like FIELDSTAR's multiple-mapping features and also satellite imaging to help him make better planning decisions on his crop rotation.

"We have seen our yields go up because of precision agriculture and using variable rate technology," Carson reports. "Plus, we're seeing increases in quality, too. That's the best of both worlds."

"Precision agriculture is every field, every year," Carson points out. "You have to analyze your results, make changes to your program, then verify them with the yield monitor and the yield maps."

Carson's extra effort in gathering field data, then analyzing it on his farm office computer is paying off on a number of fronts, including:

• Increased yields

• Improved crop quality

• Better crop input decisions

• Accurate management of Nitrogen carryover from crop to crop

• Timely fungicide treatments to protect high yields

"The sooner you start building a library of your fields, the better off you are. The more layers you have, the better the analysis. Get it in digital and hard copies so you have the information later," he adds.

Satellite imaging plays a key role in monitoring nitrogen inputs, particularly in the beet part of the rotation. Starting in 1999 Carson became an end-user with Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium, know as UMAS, which is developing the economic uses of remote sensing and satellite imaging in the private sector.

He uses the FIELDSTAR yield monitor on the wheat crop to record data and to prove the changes he made to both crops are of real value. The FIELDSTAR Office Package creates yield maps on each field, including soil sampling, topography, yields and other applications like fungicides.

After entering all data, the FIELDSTAR software helps to analyze inputs and develop a new application plan for each field the following year.