Farmers in the Lake Erie watershed area in northwest Ohio are extremely aware of the public’s interest in water quality and agriculture’s role in protecting it. David Myerholtz says precision farming practices help him and his father, Lowell, fine tune and document their efforts to protect the water quality in Lake Erie. Technology also helps them use crop inputs more efficiently.

Rich Schlipf, who heads up Rich Schlipf Farms Inc., near Milford, Ind., could be characterized as being on the bleeding edge of precision agriculture. “Although we farm only 700 acres and custom-plant about 700 acres a year, we are over-equipped,” he says.

John Kutz has more than a decade of experience using GPS-guided and controlled equipment in his family’s 2,000 acre farming operation in Fort Atkinson, Wis. Kutz, who farms with his wife, Natalie, and parents, Dennis and Sally, also operates a tiling business as well as offers custom farming services that include chicken litter application, planting, spraying and harvesting to area farmers.

Matt Miller worked closely with his father-in-law, Randy Hoff, near Mitchell, Neb., getting his equipment set up for automatic guidance. It’s helped the 450-acre irrigated corn, edible dry beans and sugarbeet operation better leverage strip-till and made it easier to build strips and then stay on them at planting.

Larry Tombaugh says he used to make mistakes farming, but now he calls them “experiments.” That change in attitude has helped him achieve yields near 284 bushel per acre for corn and 80 bushel per acre soybeans on his Streator, Ill., operation.