Precision Pays

Are you interested in getting the latest information about precision ag equipment? If so, here are a few stops you might want to schedule this winter in order to talk with Ag Leader experts:

• Iowa Power Farming Show – Des Moines, IA; Jan. 31-Feb. 2
• Cotton & Rice Conference –Tunica, MS; Jan. 31-Feb. 1
• Southern Farm Show – Raleigh, NC; Feb. 1-3
• Spokane Ag Expo – Spokane, WA; Feb. 7-9
• World Ag Expo – Tulare, CA; Feb. 14-16
• National Farm Machinery Show – Louisville, KY; Feb. 15-18
• Precision Ag 2.0 – Calgary AB; Feb. 22-23
• New York Farm Show – Syracuse, NY; Feb. 23-25
• Western Farm Show – Kansas City, KS; Feb. 24-26
• Hawkeye Farm Show – Cedar Falls, IA; Feb. 28-March 1
• Triumph of Ag Expo – Omaha, NE; Feb. 29-March 1

If you’re on the road next month and have time to visit one of these locations, be sure to find Ag Leader’s staff of experts who will be on hand to talk about the latest in precision technology equipment, enhancements, future products, and much more.

Become a fan of Ag Leader on Facebook today, and get the latest precision ag videos on the YouTube channel. For more information about Ag Leader products and services, or to visit the blog site, go to www.agleader.com.

See you at the show!

The latest in precision farming technology and techniques are always part of the annual Commodity Classic and this year is no exception.

In addition to the huge trade show featuring the latest equipment and gadgets, there will also be a number of break out sessions dedicated to the latest in precision agriculture, including a panel discussion sponsored by the Precision Ag Institute.

Three growers will share their precision agriculture success stories in a presentation, “PrecisionAg: Know More; Grow More,” on March 3 at Commodity Classic. The growers are Lon Bohn of Gibbon, NE; Don Glenn of Hillsboro, AL and Kevin Stoy from Ashley, IN. See this article from PrecisionAg Works for a preview.

The annual meeting of corn, soybean, wheat and sorghum producers will be held March 1-3 at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. Convention details and registration information are available at commodityclassic.com.

Tremont, Ill. based Precision Planting has launched the first iPad monitoring application for use in production agriculture. 

In this Precision Pays Podcast, sponsored by Ag Leader Technology , we take a closer look at “FieldView”, their latest addition to the 20/20 Seed Sense system for planter management.  I sat down with Sean Arians, education coordinator with Precision Planting to learn more about this application that will put those technologies we all love, like the iPad, to good use while in the cab of the tractor.

You can subscribe to the Precision Pays Podcast here.

Our latest ZimmPoll asked a very timely question since it’s on a topic that is the subject of a cover story on USA Today. We asked, “How will proposed changes to child labor in agriculture regulations affect farms?” Seventy percent said Negatively, seventeen percent said No Effect and only thirteen percent said Positively.

You may know that last fall the Department of Labor proposed changes that many believe could have major impacts on family farms and farm life (proposed rule – pdf). This is just another example of unnecessary government intrusion in private business and lives in my opinion. We don’t need it but . . . as if the government knows better. Riiight. You can find out more from this DOL early news release.

Our new ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, “Do you agree with President Obama’s call for more clean (renewable) energy?” Let us know what you think. He definitely issued a call during his State of the Union speech last night. Here’s an excerpt:

We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.

Last week, we heard from Todd Reed, farmer from Waverly, Neb., who works as a precision ag consultant for his family’s dryland corn and soybean farm. He spends his days writing variable rate planting prescriptions and fertilizer prescriptions using Ag Leader’s SMS Software.

Today’s high-tech seed isn’t cheap. If you’re not controlling where and how much of each type of seed you plant, you’re probably sacrificing yield potential and bottom line performance. Ag Leader’s Integra display features Advanced Seed Monitoring to help growers lower seed cost during planting season and improve yield potential at harvest time. Todd says they run 16-row planters and with seed shut-off, saw a big increase in seed savings. Listen to Reed explain

Todd says they’re trying to be more efficient in everything they do on the farm and nitrogen application is key. Part of his passion is analyzing the data in order to fine-tune each hybrid they plant based on yields and nitrogen application rates from the previous fall. Listen to Reed explain

Continue to check back to the blog prior to planting season for more great tips and information on Advanced Seed Monitoring through the Integra display.

Become a fan of Ag Leader on Facebook today, and get the latest precision ag videos on the YouTube channel. For more information about Ag Leader products and services, or to visit the blog site, go to www.agleader.com.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between USDA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Minnesota to develop a new state conservation program for agriculture. The program is designed to increase the voluntary adoption of conservation practices by farmers and ranchers that protect local rivers, streams and other waters by reducing fertilizer run-off and soil erosion.

Through this partnership producers, who undertake a substantial level of conservation activities to reduce nutrient run-off and erosion, will receive assurance from the state that their farms will meet Minnesota’s water quality standards and goals during the life of the agreement. Vilsack, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson signed the MOU during a ceremony in the Minnesota Capitol.

“Establishment of this program will protect our water resources by providing assurances and incentives to participating farmers that their good deeds – their strong commitment to conservation – will be recognized,” Vilsack said. “Farmers will know the rules of the game while the state, EPA and the public will know that this program will lead to cleaner water.”

The MOU signing is the first step toward developing the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program (AWQCP), designed to increase the adoption of recommended conservation practices to improve water quality on agricultural land. The partners will next establish a Technical Advisory Committee to develop the certification program that will support the state’s water quality standards and goals. The committee will solicit input from stakeholders in designing criteria to provide certainty for producers who have voluntarily attained or maintained a certain level of water quality improvements on their agricultural land. Minnesota will test the program in several pilot watersheds.

Farmers around Illinois who are interested in receiving a “check-up” on their risk management plans are invited to attend one of three upcoming meetings, sponsored by AgriVisor and COUNTRY Financial.

The meetings will be held on January 31 at the Holiday Inn in Mt. Vernon, Ill.; February 1 at the Northfield Suites in Springfield, Ill.; and February 2 at University Plaza in DeKalb, Ill. All meetings begin at 5:00 pm and include a ribeye dinner. Cost is $19 per person. A drawing for an iPad will also be held at each location.

“The meetings will be a ‘one-stop shop’ where farmers can learn about many key factors that may affect their risk management plans in 2012,” said Clayton Pope, manager, AgriVisor, LLC. “Today’s markets are so volatile; our goal with these meetings is to provide farmers with specific tools to help them reduce their risk to enhance the prospects for a successful growing season.”

Registration closes January 23. Call your local COUNTRY financial representative, county Farm Bureau office, or visit www.agrivisor.com for more information and to register.

In our latest ZimmPoll we asked the question “Do you think there is currently an “Ag Bubble?” It looks like most think so since 66% said Yes and 34% said No. That’s kind of a pessimistic outlook don’t you think? If you think we’re in a bubble please feel free to comment on why. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Our new ZimmPoll is now live. We’re asking the question, “How will proposed changes to child labor in agriculture regulations affect farms?” Last fall the Department of Labor proposed changes that many believe could have major impacts on family farms and farm life (proposed rule – pdf). At best it seems like there are some good intentions without careful consideration of the consequences and then there’s always that “how does the Dept. of Labor interpret the rules thing.” A public comment period ended on December 1, 2011.

Here’s some language about the proposed changes from an early news release:

The proposal would strengthen current child labor regulations prohibiting agricultural work with animals and in pesticide handling, timber operations, manure pits and storage bins. It would prohibit farmworkers under age 16 from participating in the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco. And it would prohibit youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic, including communication, devices while operating power-driven equipment.

The department also is proposing to create a new nonagricultural hazardous occupations order that would prevent children under 18 from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.

On our sister site, AgWired, my weekly ZimmCast podcast features a conversation you may be interested in hearing. In this week’s program we use the M word, as in Mobile, as in Float Mobile Learning. I just had a conversation with Chad Udell, Managing Director, about mobile learning technology and what that means for today’s agribusiness customers, including in the precision sector.

Float Mobile’s parent company is the Iona Group. Chad says the company has a deep history working with agribusiness companies like GROWMARK, Pioneer and Bayer. He says, “There’s a great amount of demand in the marketplace to put the right information in the right people’s hands at the right time.” He says that when growers need information they’re often away from the computer and out in the field. Examples include working with clients to put mobile and updated information in the hands of sales staff at a farm show. Tablets like an iPad or Android device are very cost effective for this purpose. In fact, Chad says mobile application development is surprisingly affordable. He says these applications are simple and do one or two things very well. Float Mobile uses a S3D Process with their clients which means Strategy, Design, Develop, Deliver. He says they work quickly since the whole mobile device world is changing rapidly today.

To learn more about Float Mobile Learning listen in to this week’s program: Float Mobile Learning

Check out their 2012 predictions for the Mobile Landscape on their blog.

Trimble announced a strategic alliance with Great American Insurance Group to help farmers automate their crop insurance reporting under the USDA Federal Crop Insurance Program. The new recordkeeping system makes it possible for Farm Works™ users to submit their crop insurance records electronically to Great American Insurance Group. The time-saving solution makes it simple for farmers to transfer planting and harvest data directly to the Great American Insurance Group systems from their Farm Works Mapping software.

In 2011 the USDA Federal Crop Insurance Program, administered by the Risk Management Agency, began accepting precision agricultural data which meets the specific requirements listed in RMA’s Crop Insurance Handbook and/or Loss adjustment Manual. The new reporting system will help farmers more quickly, easily and accurately meet USDA requirements related to acreage, planting and harvest. Geo-referenced data may be collected from the tractor or combine cab with a compatible precision farming display such as the Trimble® FmX® integrated display or CFX-750™ touch screen.

Terry Griffin, PhD, has joined CrescoAg LLC as Vice President – Applied Economics. Griffin will join the company focused on developing new products that will help farmers utilize existing data from yield monitors and other precision ag equipment to make better decisions for their operations.

Griffin joins CrescoAg from the University of Arkansas where he was a professor of row crops economics, extension specialist and team coordinator of the Working Group on Precision Agriculture. Terry specialized in utilizing spatial technologies to improve agricultural production systems and quality of farm life. He also served as farm management and spatial technologies specialist for the University of Illinois Extension.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in agronomy and master’s degree in agricultural economics from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. in agricultural economics with emphases in farm management, production economics, and spatial economics from Purdue University. While at Purdue, he coordinated the Top Farmer Crop Workshop and organized the whole-farm linear programming service and introduced the service of yield monitor data analysis to participants.

Griffin is a certified crop advisor (CCA), member of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, and a charter member of the International Society of Precision Agriculture. He received the 2010 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence for Researcher/Educator from Meister Media, and was the 2002 National Winner of the NASA GIS and Remote Sensing Decision Support Seminar and the 2003 National Winner of the NASA Excellence Award in Remote Sensing and Precision Agriculture.

A Precision Planting product has won the No-Till Product of the Year award for the third straight year. No-Till Farmer readers selected the 20/20 SeedSense/AirForce system as the best product of 2011, following on the heels of No-Till Product of the Year wins by Precision Planting’s Keeton Seed Firmer in 2009 and 2010.

The 20/20 SeedSense/AirForce system was also voted the top no-till product in the Precision Tools category, and was among 11 finalists entered in the overall Product of the Year voting.

Manufacturers whose products were voted the best in 11 individual categories were recognized before about 750 no-tillers at a special luncheon awards ceremony during the 20th annual National No-Tillage Conference in St. Louis, Mo. They were also recognized in the Winter 2012 issue of No-Till Farmer’s Conservation Tillage Guide.

A call for nominations for the 2012 program, as well as voting, will be announced later this year.

Things are looking bleak for the proposed LightSquared LTE network according to a story in PC World.

A key federal agency involved in testing the proposed LightSquared LTE network has concluded that there is no practical way to solve interference between that network and GPS, possibly dealing a crippling blow to the startup carrier’s hopes for a terrestrial mobile network.

That agency is the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee (PNT ExComm). Now that’s a mouthful. The agencies that make up this one have unanimously concluded that none of the LightSquared proposals would overcome interference with GPS.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter to the FCC:

Earlier this week we published results of our ZimmPoll that showed a majority think the LightSquared proposal would be good for ag/rural America. However, most of those positive responses all came at nearly the same time.

Todd Reed grew up on his family’s turkey farm near Waverly, Neb. He started working part-time during the school year in 1998 and began full-time on the farm with his two second cousins and their fathers in 2005. He studied Mechanized Systems Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and went on to earn his Master’s Degree in the same field with an emphasis on precision agriculture and variable rate systems.

He currently does precision ag consulting for his family’s dryland corn and soybean rotation farm, writing variable rate planting prescriptions and fertilizer prescriptions to yield analysis, using Ag Leader’s SMS Software. Though he doesn’t own or rent any land of his own, he plays a vital role in the farm’s management decisions regarding data analysis and field-level research in terms of breaking down yield by hybrid by soil type, by field, by population, by nitrogen rate – to evaluate the decisions the farm makes.

He explains how they entered the world of precision ag. Listen to Reed explain

Todd says precision agriculture is vital to their operation and explains what kind of return they saw on their investment the first year. Listen to Reed explain

He says the technology allows them to reduce overlap, reduce driver fatigue, reduce injury to the crops and save on chemical application. Tune in again next week as we hear more from Todd about the benefits to precision agriculture products from Ag Leader.

Become a fan of Ag Leader on Facebook today, and get the latest precision ag videos on the YouTube channel. For more information about Ag Leader products and services, or to visit the blog site, go to www.agleader.com.

In our latest ZimmPoll we asked the question, “What do you think of the LightSquared broadband internet proposal?” This controversial issue has pitted GPS services and hardware manufacturers against those who want better broadband internet service in their area and agriculture is only one of the industries that could be impacted. Interestingly, our poll results were mostly against the proposal until one afternoon when almost all of the “positive” results were posted. That suggests that there was a concerted effort to impact the results. So here they are. We had 73% say that the proposal would be Good for ag/rural America and 23% say it would be Bad for ag/rural America. What do you think about that?

Our new ZimmPoll is now live. We’re asking the question, “Do you think there’s currently an “Ag Bubble”?” Let us know what you think.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.