Precision farming continues to mature with new developments in numerous technologies that allows a producer more easily adopt the practices and be able to take advantage of its benefits. Remote sensing can provide information during the growing season to assess variability and permit the crop producer to utilize the information to make management decision. This technology has been evolving with respect to availability of vendors providing the service and the application of this technology to production fields.

In corn and soybean studies, remote sensing has been evaluated in production fields north of Madison, WI. In addition to remote sensing data, other data such as crop yield, plant stand, soil fertility and plant tissue. The remotely sensed data sources were airborne, satellite and hand held radiometers. For five growing seasons, the greatest variability in remote sensing data from seven production fields was water stress of the growing crop. The stress was due primarily to soil and topography. Other observations were disease, soil compaction and machine operator errors.