How to Calculate Your Farm Savings: Using Trimble savings calculators to maximize your ROI

August 22, 2022

There’s no doubt that inputs have a big impact on farm profits. While you can’t always control crop prices, you can decrease variable input costs with the help of precision ag technology. But how much can you really save?

Return on investment (ROI) is important — you always want to be sure your investment is worth it. To find out how much you can save on your farm, Trimble Agriculture has created three ROI calculators to show you just how much using our innovative precision ag technology can pay off!

WeedSeeker 2 ROI Calculator

No matter what type of crops you’re growing, herbicides are a major input cost. If you are dealing with herbicide-resistant weeds, your costs are even higher.

You’re probably already taking steps to reduce your herbicide costs, such as properly calibrating your sprayer and utilizing the proper adjuvants. Even so, you’re still overapplying herbicides! Not only does this overapplication of herbicides lead to unnecessary costs, but it can also harm the environment and damage your crops.

Our WeedSeeker 2 spot spray system allows you to decrease your herbicide applications by only applying the product where weeds are present. This leads to a decrease in the amount of herbicide you need since you’re not spraying weed-free sections. 

While it’s clear that this system will save you money, the WeedSeeker 2 ROI Calculator will show you just how much.

Using the Calculator

To determine how much the WeedSeeker 2 can help you save, you’ll need to know information about the herbicide, your equipment, and your fields.

Let’s say you have a 2000 acre field with 30% weed pressure. You’re using a sprayer that has a 60’ boom and 1,000-gallon tank. The herbicide costs $5.25/oz, and you’re applying 5oz of product per acre and 18 gallons of mixture per acre.

Using a conventional spray system will cost you $52,500. But when you implement Weedseeker 2, you can cut costs to $15,750! Plus, you’ll need 11 tank fills rather than 36.

Section Control Savings Calculator

Section control gives you more xx allow you to customize your implements and turn them on and off as decided in order to eliminate yield loss due to skipped or double-covered sections.

Trimble Agriculture section control solutions quickly pay for themselves with reduced input costs and increased yield no matter how often you are planting or spraying your crops.

Using the Calculator

The Section Control Savings Calculator considers important agronomic and equipment factors specific to your operation in order to provide an estimate of what savings you can achieve by incorporating this technology onto your farm.

Simply plug in your average yield and commodity price, and we can calculate yield loss due to overplanting or overspraying.

Add in your average seed populations, seeds per bag, and price per bag of seed, and our Section Control Savings Calculator will calculate the savings you can achieve from reduced input costs.

You can even select the field type of the area for which you are looking to improve yields in order to receive a more accurate estimate.

RTX Input Savings Calculator

In your current setup, you’re likely overlapping between passes when you’re tilling, planting, spraying, and harvesting. Depending on your land, machinery, and operator, this overlap could be anywhere between a few inches to a few feet —  and each overlapping inch means higher input and labor costs.

By utilizing CenterPoint RTX correction technology, you’ll correct your position’s accuracy to 1”, which means you can substantially decrease your overlap between passes — and a smaller overlap means lower labor and input costs. 

The exact amount CenterPoint RTX can help you save depends on your current setup. That’s where our RTX Input Savings Calculator comes in.

An Example

Let’s say you have a 6,000-acre corn farm. You use a 30-foot planter with a one-foot overlap to plant seed that costs $60/acre. By utilizing the RTX calculator, you find that you can save $10,918.50! But that only accounts for planting — let’s look at herbicides and pesticides.

You use a 60-foot boom sprayer with a 1.5’ overlap to apply products at the cost of $56/acre. By utilizing RTX, you’ll save $7,816!

When you combine the costs of planting and spraying, you’ll find you save just shy of 20K. Plus, we didn’t account for the costs of fertilizing, harvesting, or spraying multiple times.

Learn How Much You Can Save

Are you excited to see how much you can save? Then head on over to our calculators to try them for yourself. Feel free to change up your input information to account for various products you use and that new piece of equipment you’re considering.

To learn more about how to maximize ROI on your farm, contact your local Trimble reseller today.