It's 3 p.m. on Thursday, do you know where your precision farming specialists are?

With all but two professional football teams in hibernation until next fall, the vast majority of players have a few months to recover from the rigors of another NFL season.

While attending my first National No-Tillage Conference last week, I found there was no shortage of programs and conversation centered on precision farming technology.

The old adage, “garbage in, garbage out,” is a simple phrase used to describe the flawed collection and analysis of yield data that leads to flawed results. At the recent Ag Leader dealer event in Iowa, precision technology consultant John McGuire noted that far too often, farmers store reams of recorded yield data on their shelves, because nobody has ever taken time to show them what to do with it.

It’s always a pleasure to get a guided tour of farm equipment dealerships I visit and take an intimate look at the how each precision farming operation is structured.

When it comes to quantifying the value of precision farming services for dealerships, there isn’t a standard or measurement to cover them all. Precision operations come in all shapes and sizes — from the single technician operating out of one store — to an entirely separate business spun-off from an iron dealership.

When I began this job, one of the first things I did was scour the Internet to familiarize myself with precision farming terminology.