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Precision farming – use of digital geographically referenced data in farming operations – is the leading example of a cluster of emerging information technologies in agriculture. To date, the vast majority of academic and promotional literature addressing precision farming has focused on the field and farm-level economic and environmental benefits of site-specific allocation of crop inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, and seeds). In this paper, we question popular perceptions of the technology and pursue a sociological analysis through identification of consistencies between precision farming and the political and economic requirements of an industrializing agriculture. Through promotion of a public commitment and a technical mechanism to mitigate farm chemical pollution, precision farming legitimates chemically-based agriculture in an era of rising environmentalism. Further, precision farming is based on, and will advance, the commodification of agricultural information – appropriation of field and farm-level decision processes through substitution of capital for local knowledge. By automating farm-level data collection and information management and by reducing agriculturalists’ reliance on public sector agricultural research and extension, precision farming supports further integration of on-farm activity into a coordinated system of industrial manufacture.