Precision FarmingLever­aging tech­nology to enhance prof­itability

Marcos Esteve is 28 years old and manages a family farm of 220ha in Navarre, where he mainly grows cereals like wheat, barley, and oats. He also includes legu­mi­nous crops like peas, rape­seed, and vetch in the crop rota­tion. His connec­tion to the coun­try­side began when his parents decided to move from Barcelona to Navarre, to live in a small village with seven inhab­i­tants. In 2012, they started exper­i­menting with organic farming, but when it proved unprof­itable, they switched to conven­tional farming in 2016. “With the change, we aimed to achieve prof­itability without neglecting every­thing we had accom­plished in terms of soil conser­va­tion through organic farming tech­niques,” Marcos comments.

The right machines

“At that time, we had a tractor which didn’t have auto-pilot, a display, or ISOBUS. I used to go out to work based on whether it had rained or not and using those kinds of visual esti­mates. After one season, back in 2017, I realised that our way of working could be greatly improved,” he explains. “For example, I realised that when using the spreader, I was either applying too much or not reaching the required dose, and that when working at a width of 24m, there were times when I only needed to spread over six metres, yet I was working at 12 because I would cut off one side, or 24 because I kept both sides. “So the following year, I intro­duced contin­uous weighing and section cut-off, and the savings were tremen­dous. Another year later, we switched to a John Deere tractor with GPS, an inte­grated display, ISOBUS, and we installed ISOBUS on the fertiliser spreader.”

The next step was to purchase a sprayer and acquire another tractor, a John Deere 6R 155, supe­rior to the previous ones, which featured telemetry, advanced connec­tivity, and auto­matic head­land turning, allowing Marcos to further improve the tasks he carries out. Marcos does not follow the general trend of buying trac­tors. He prefers to lease them. “It’s much more conve­nient to pay a monthly fee and change trac­tors every five years. This way, our tractor never becomes outdated, and the monthly payments include every­thing we need,” he says. “This gives us more peace of mind, as it relieves us of the worry about main­te­nance costs, including tyre changes, or any repairs that might arise.” He currently has a John Deere 6R 185 that is only a few months old.

Change in farming prac­tices

With the previous approach, the family used chisel ploughing and harrowing, but four years ago they decided to switch to no-till seeding on all the fields, using cover crops and straw chop­ping. And it is yielding very good results. According to their calcu­la­tions, just by not tilling, they save 300–400 hours of work per year. One of Marcos’ goals is to have a living soil that can unlock nutri­ents and retain mois­ture. “The soil is a funda­mental element that should be cared for,” he says. Leaving the chopped straw on the field surface provides him with an addi­tional 1.2 to 1.5t/ha of organic matter per year. “We mainly plant legu­mi­nous crops to care for the soil, although we harvest them at the end of their growing cycle. They provide us with 20-30kg/ha of nitrogen, which we save on fertiliser for the following year.”

After harvesting, he aims to plant a cover crop to protect the soil, increase organic matter content, and promote mois­ture reten­tion. “During drought periods, the differ­ence is notice­able; we are less affected by the lack of water, and we protect our produc­tion.” He also acknowl­edges that with direct drilling, not every­thing is advan­ta­geous; there are certain draw­backs, like the emer­gence of pests the farm didn’t have before, like slugs, which have appeared due to the increased mois­ture.

Plan­ning with data

Marcos studied mechan­ical engi­neering, but his passion is agri­cul­ture. He firmly believes that preci­sion agri­cul­ture is not the future; it has been here for years. “Primarily, I rely on yield maps, with their weight and crop mois­ture content. Addi­tion­ally, with the tractor, I docu­ment all the tasks I perform, the paths taken in each field, and the most impor­tant oper­ating para­me­ters (fuel usage, revo­lu­tions, engine load and temper­a­ture, and wheel slip­page). I also use a self-devel­oped app, along with data layers from different sources, to auto­mate the gener­a­tion of prescrip­tion maps that increase prof­itability and opti­mise resource use.”

The compar­a­tive analysis of different trajec­to­ries allows him to choose the most suit­able one for each field.

Marcos opti­mizes the tracks based on the yield maps and the driving paths of previous oper­a­tions.

He uploads all this data to the John Deere oper­a­tions centre plat­form and veri­fies it from his mobile phone when he is in the field. Once the workday is over, he returns home, where he consults the plat­form again on his computer and makes deci­sions about how, when, and where to carry out the next tasks. He trans­forms these deci­sions into prescrip­tion maps that he sends to the tractor, and these prescrip­tions are auto­mat­i­cally executed in the field. His machinery fleet is perfectly adapted to his needs. He has a tractor, a seed drill, a fertiliser spreader, a sprayer, and two trailers. The tractor is almost autonomous; when it is working, the paths, head­land turns, and vari­able dosing of seed, fertiliser, or plant protec­tion prod­ucts are carried out according to the corre­sponding prescrip­tion loaded previ­ously. He only needs to use the steering wheel to drive the tractor from the shed to the fields and back.

Tractor paths

Marcos has dedi­cated many hours to opti­mising the tractor paths when working in the field. “I opti­mise them based on the yield maps and the paths of previous tasks. I detect unnec­es­sary passes, those where the working width is much less than the imple­ment I am using, and I improve them for future occa­sions.” With this, he has managed to signif­i­cantly reduce the time per field, diesel consump­tion, and tractor wear.

Aerial view of the family farm.

Marcos with his John Deere 6R 185 in the field

What does he achieve with all this?

All his crops are rain-fed, achieving average yields of 5.6t/ha for wheat, 5.1t/ha for barley, and 4.6t/ha for oats. In 2025, the rain­fall has been very good, but the trend in recent years suggests that rain­fall is decreasing. However, thanks to all the improve­ments he has been imple­menting, the farm has managed to increase yields, by 22% in the case of wheat, since 2015. At the same time he has reduced fertiliser use by 22%, plant protec­tion prod­ucts by 40%, and seed by 12%. “And we have increased the produc­tivity of our work by 30%, cutting the time needed for each task.”

As for diesel, consump­tion has decreased from 10,000 litres per year to just 3,600. “With the tractor, we now use 8.4 litres/ha of diesel to grow cereals,” notes Marcos. Although direct drills are more expen­sive than conven­tional ones, calcu­la­tions show that the invest­ment will be recouped within five to six years. His efforts don’t stop there; he is currently devel­oping an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based soft­ware plat­form that will further opti­mise his work in the field and, conse­quently, the farm’s prof­itability.