Indiana Prairie Farmer magazine wrote a recent story quoting a Franklin, Ind., precision farming consultant Greg Kneubuhler who says the next hot tool farmers want to invest in is row shut-offs for planters.
He says a savings of 5 percent can be achieved, which can deliver a payback in two years. And in some cases, with irregular-shaped fields, payback can be earned in one year.
Spring is just around the corner – the time when a farmer’s fancy turns to thoughts of planting.
Growers stopping by the Ag Leader Technology booth at the Commodity Classic trade show last week definitely had spring on their minds. General sales manager Mike Olson says they talked a lot about what growers need to know to get precision farming equipment ready for the season. “The biggest thing is to get the stuff out early and start going through it,” Mike told me. “You need to bring the monitor out and download all the data from last year, make a back up, and then get it set up for this year. Make sure all your field names are in there, your boundaries, and make sure all your firm ware is updated.”
Mike says updating is important because all companies bring out new features that make things more efficient and easier. Listen to Mike’s interview below and talk to your local Ag Leader dealer for more pre-planting tips.
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We like to write weekly about how growers and how company technology makes precision agriculture pay. Part of making these tools pay almost always includes time savings—which isn’t always as black and white as input dollars saved.
Today I spoke with Hannibal, Mo., grower Mark Lehenbauer about his first decade with precision farming tools on their corn-soybean operation. Mark, who farms with his dad Ronald, has always been interested in the latest technology, and bought their first yield monitor in 2000, the year he graduated from college.
“At first, we tracked yield data, and it was a big learning curve on using it the way we should. The first efficiency we saw was yield loss due to weeds, so we switched to a two-pass application—which led to the purchase of a Hagie sprayer to cut our custom application costs.”
The biggest time saver came two years ago when they invested in auto steer. “Aside from the efficiencies we gained when spraying with Ag Leader’s DirectCommand AutoSwath boom control, we gained time savings and it reduced operator fatigue,” he says.
“Before auto steer, you would become just exhausted by mid-afternoon when spraying corn because you were focusing so intensely on the rows. With auto steer, it allows us to run an extra hour or two because all we do now is turn around, push the button and go.”
Lehenbauer says auto steer saves time during planting as well. “When you’re not exhausted at the end of the day, you can still run later and plant an extra 20 to 30 acres—which really adds up when you can shorten your planting window,” he says.
Analyzing data every winter has also turned into another time saver, too. “We use Ag Leader’s SMS software, and we look at numerous year’s data for hybrids and varieties in different tillage environments. It has truly helped us reduce tillage, saving time with more no-till. And the data has helped us realize the true value of no-till fields. Those fields have saved us time during harvest, because we can get into no-till fields quicker after a rain without leaving the ruts that often occur in our reduced tillage fields. Without ruts, we don’t have to do as much fall or spring tillage,” he says.
Lehenbauer also uses the data to write his own prescription maps, based off of university recommendations. “The data helps us find greater efficiencies on a field-by-field basis, comparing fuel usage and time spent in fields, even examining varieties than can take longer to harvest if there’s issues with green stem.
“It’s the little things we’ve done over the years that have added up to a lot of time and efficiency savings. You start figuring out acres by the hours you’ve saved and multiply that by your planting or harvest window—it really adds up to much greater efficiency,” Lehenbauer says.
Precision farming has come a long way since the military allowed civilian access to the NAVSTAR GPS constellation in 1995. We’ve gone from initial accuracies of tens of meters down to a couple centimeters. And now we’ve got receivers handling multiple satellite constellations, referred to as GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System).
Topcon Precision Agriculture’s senior VP Albert Zahalka gave a talk recently about how the future of precision ag is here today, and the journey is just beginning. Some of the key points he made:
In the future, farmers will be increasingly reliant on accurate, dependable statistical information, which will then feed into integrated precision agriculture systems to deliver outstanding productivity and crop yields.
In the not-too-distant future, we’ll have a farmer sitting in his farmhouse, looking at his computer and saying to his wife, “Marge, we are going to do the planting today.”
Then he will press the “planting” button and his tractor (or tractors) will come out of the shed, head off to the fields and begin planting the right seed in the right location, in the right quantities for optimum growth, all with minimal human intervention.
And if there’s a problem or a machine breakdown, the farmer will be instantly alerted.
And as those crops grow and mature, we’ll have sprayers and watering equipment driving along in the farm field. It will see that one plant is not as green or thriving as well as the next, so it will apply a shot of water or nutrient as required.
That vision is still a little way into the future – but it is clearly the direction precision agriculture technology is going.
The fight for space in the tractor/sprayer/combine cab continues, especially as more and more precision farming capabilities are added to an operation.
Clutter has happened for a variety of reasons. From anxious early adopter growers buying numerous early controllers, to anxious dealers selling the latest equipment without regard to grower needs, to growers not thinking about longer term needs.
Paul Bruns, who runs a precision agriculture company called Precision Consulting Services in Canby, Minn., says cab clutter consolidation is a huge topic of conversation right now. “I’ve got a lot of customers looking into moving their planter monitor display, lightbar, variable-rate controller and more—consolidating them into one screen. This can be done, but you need to do your research to learn what monitors can and cannot do, or find a trusted, reliable dealer/consultant who knows a lot of equipment,” he says.
“With the new age of monitors, you’ll be hard pressed to find a display for less than $5000. So it pays to really think what types of applications you may want to do in the future. For example, I was recently installing a boom shutoff system for a grower, and he happened to say ‘I’d really like to consider putting clutches on the planter’ so I stopped and told him we may want to go in a different direction, especially if you may want to vary the rates down the road,” he says.
Bruns, An Ag Leader and Trimble dealer who has grown his business because he does help growers to think and plan ahead, saves money in the long run for his clients. “As in this case, it was better to spend $1,000 or $2,000 more today, than have to spend an additional $5000 down the road.” He says there’s not enough consultative selling going on among retailers to learn a grower’s long-term plans, or to help them with those decisions. “Some just sell what the grower wants today.”
Knowing the agronomic side (he also writes fertilizer prescriptions), along with his ability to service most equipment on the precision ag market—as well as sell seed for Pioneer—gives Bruns a broad perspective. “The challenge is finding the best fit for every grower, as well as advising them on what’s going to deliver ROI,” he says.
“One of the reasons I have sold many Insight monitors is because they work with all colors of equipment, and they can handle all the functions a grower needs. Ag Leader has kind of been the ISOBUS before there was ISOBUS. And now with their Integra monitor—those types of touch screen monitors offer more flexibility for future features and benefits that can be added—so you don’t have to keep changing displays,” he adds. (Click on ‘Display Comparison Chart’ under SeedCommand )
Bruns thinks we’re starting to turn the corner on getting closer to a day when the ISOBUS theory becomes a much greater reality of compliance between systems. “Deere talks about reverse compatibility with their 2600 monitor to be able to drive a red tractor that is auto pilot ready. Same thing with Trimble or Case, so they can plug in and run a John Deere AutoTrac, for example,” he says. “We’re going to start seeing more and more of this, which will also help get rid of cab clutter, and add simplicity for the grower.”
For more information:
North American ISOBUS Implementation Task Force
Earlier this week Ag Leader Technology added the patent-pending SureVac electric row shutoff to their lineup of planter section shutoff devices. Since I was at the Iowa Power Farming Show I stopped in and learned all about it from Chad Huedepohl. You can watch the interview or just listen to it below. Here’s the details:
SureVac provides today’s precision farming operation with an easily- installed, zero-maintenance solution to reduce seed costs and increase yield potential.
SureVac is designed for John Deere Pro-SeriesTM XP row units, but is also compatible with any John Deere vacuum seed meter manufactured in the last 20 years. In addition to John Deere corn and soybean seed disks, SureVac supports the eSet® vacuum disk from Precision Planting.
Chad says SureVac is an electric row shutoff made to shut off the seed placement per row on a row by row basis. He says this benefits the farmer user by saving on seed and avoiding “doubles” such as on point rows.
Iowa Power Farming Show Photo Album
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As I talk to many growers about their adoption of precision farming equipment and tools, I always like to find out what technology they could eliminate from their operation—if they were forced to give up something.
Well, as you can probably guess, almost everyone who has auto steer would never go back to steering again. Who can blame them. However, the other day I spoke with central Ohio grower Gary Piper, who told me, “I’d give up auto steer in favor of my planter row control.”
This Centerburg producer, who farms 5,400 acres with his two brothers, just finished his third season using Ag Leader SeedCommand on their Insight monitor that controls Tru Count clutches on their 16-row planter. Piper admits to being skeptical when he first installed the units—about the reliability of the clutches and how soon he might recover his investment. But he figured with smaller, odd-shaped fields, ‘like one 24-acre field with eight corners,’ that it would pay off eventually and help control costs.
“The first year running them, I was very impressed. I saw first hand the results since I do all the corn planting. It wasn’t just the seed savings, but it really improved harvestability not having to deal with doubled-up rows that combine like a weed patch,” Piper says.
One-year payoff. It wasn’t until last year that he kept track of exactly how much seed he saved. “After planting 2,500 acres, we saved 38 bags, or about $7,600 worth of triple-stack hybrids—enough to easily pay for it in one year. And with SmartStax hybrids running $300-$350 this coming year, you can save even more.
Another benefit he liked had to do with comfort, under weather-stressed times. “Last spring we had challenging weather, which forced us to spend three long nights running the planter. As an operator I could not have physically done that and still kept the precision I demand—which the SeedCommand gave me.”
Yield loss. The other savings not often considered is yield loss from double-planted rows. “I never realized how dramatic that can be until I helped a neighbor combine last fall, who had double planted point rows—and I watched the yield monitor drop to about one-third the normal yield.”
After hearing that, one begins to understand why Gary won’t part with his planter row control system. Just plain common sense.
If you’re interested in a precision agriculture decision-making spreadsheet tool developed by Kansas State, look under ‘Decision-Making Tools’ called KSU-GPSguidance at this link:
http://www.agmanager.info/farmmgt/machinery/default.asp
As with any piece of machinery, computer, etc., there’s always a bit of a learning curve. Same goes for precision farming equipment. A good dealer with good technicians can be worth their weight in gold. But good ongoing training from a manufacturer can really help speed the adoption process.
To that end, this week I asked Jessica Reis, Marketing Communications Specialist for Ag Leader Technology, about how they approach training. I’ll let her tell you the story…
“Each summer since I’ve been at Ag Leader, I’ve conducted customer interviews and testimonials. I always ask the question: ‘Are Ag Leader products easy to use?’ The typical farmer response is – ‘there’s a learning curve, but you catch on pretty quickly.’ Then I ask them about teaching someone else in their operation and the response is – ‘a couple of times around the field and they can run it on their own, no problem; or my dad picked this up in about five minutes and he doesn’t like computers!’
“Even though Ag Leader products are simple to use – especially for those who grew up with technology – Ag Leader wants to make sure growers get as much out of their precision farming investment as possible. We want to educate them on their particular product, but also the other functionality and technology that’s out there.
“We have numerous training session options:
“So why is this important? Although I do not want it to seem like you have to have training to use an Ag Leader product (that is far from the case), I want to let your readers know its available as a resource. One of the largest benefits is the opportunity to interact with other growers and learn about how they use Ag Leader products,” she says.
John Deere’s RowCommand, which allows for seed savings by avoiding overplanting, is now available for chain-drive planters.
Introduced in 2008 for Pro-Shaft drive planters with MaxEmerge and Pro-Series XP row units, RowCommand has become a widely used planter component for many row-crop producers.
“As the cost of seed continues to rise, more producers are looking for ways to maximize their seed investment through more precise placement in the field and to reduce overlap,” says Chris Savener, product manager, John Deere Seeding. “The availability of RowCommand as a field conversion attachment to chain-drive planters gives more producers an opportunity to realize the value of this technology in their operations.”
The RowCommand system controls seed delivery by automatically engaging and disengaging the chain drive clutch on each individual row unit based on GPS field maps and boundaries. “The system allows operators to reduce overplanting in point rows and around headlands, thereby reducing seed costs and the yield drag associated with double planting,” Savener adds.
RowCommand requires a GreenStar2 1800 or 2600 display and SeedStar2 monitoring system installed on the planter for operation. The RowCommand system is compatible with the following chain-driven John Deere planter models and row configurations:
When the term ‘crop consultant’ comes to mind, growers often think in terms of scouting, insects, diseases, soil fertility and testing, and perhaps input buying recommendations. But have you stopped to think about their value in helping you properly invest in tools of precision agriculture?
Retailers who sell precision ag equipment know the technology, but do they know your operation as well as a crop consultant might? Michael Vos, software sales manager for Ag Leader Technology, says that crop consultants often have an advantage of knowing agronomics, and that gives them a broader perspective of a grower’s operation.
Place seed, place fertilizer. “For example, just yesterday we were talking with a crop consultant who was answering grower questions about the placement of fertilizer and especially micronutrients. He says the first thing he reminds growers is not to forget the fundamentals—placing the seed accurately in the field,” Vos says. “He says that once growers do that, then they can look at using precision technology to band fertilizer and micronutrients and plant right over the top of it—reducing rates compared to broadcast.”
Vos says consultants that they work with often dovetail that discussion into asking, ‘Well, then how are you going to make sure you are applying fertilizer accurately?’ “That’s when they talk about the value of a controller monitor like our InSight or INTEGRA models, that not only control rates (flat rate or prescription variable rate), but it monitors the rates and records them to help improve future decision making. And, in combination with a guidance system like our ParaDyme, they can optimize seeding and fertility in a strip-till system.”
See the big picture. “Crop consultants understand the breadth and depth of the entire farming operation—from agronomics to technology to marketing. That allows them to see the weaker links in an operation, and help point growers in the best direction to improve their efficiency,” Vos says.
Not only can they help correct the inefficiencies, a good crop consultant can also help growers prioritize their precision farming investment. “Some farmers may be better off starting out with a precision ag tool for their planter. Others may get a quicker payoff by adding technology to their sprayer. Still others may want to start with a guidance system,” he says.
Other resources:
Why Hire A Crop Consultant? (Corn & Soybean Digest)
How to Choose a Crop Consultant (Citrus & Vegetable)
How to Choose Your Crop Consultant (AgProfessional)
What a Consulting Engineer Can Do For You
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