Post-Harvest Review
Precision Ag Management Comes Of Age
MOLINE, 111. It’s har
vest. The smell of fall in the
air and more than a little bit
of grain chaff, too! A com
bine hums smoothly in the
distance as it makes its way
down the field. But when the
tractor and grain cart are
summoned, there’s no one
around to jump in and go.
Where are the farm hands?
Because this tractor is
driverless, it starts up, uses
global positioning satellites
(GPS) to locate the combine,
and makes its way safely
through the field. When it ar
rives alongside the combine,
the grain is deposited into the
cart on the go.
Next, the tractor pulls the
load back to its resting spot
and shuts down. You can bet
there are busy farm hands
around but they’re not in the
tractor cab. Satellites and
software have just given them
a whole new job description.
This concept isn’t that far
out. Twenty years ago, no one
had even heard of GPS or
Precision agriculture is not a single technology, noted, which farmers can use to improve decision
said Dr. Kent Olsen, Department of Applied Econom- making in agricultural production, marketing,
ics, University of Minnesota. It*s a “suite of manage- finance, and personnel management,
ment strategies, technologies, and practices,” he
geographic positioning sys
tems unless you were an
engineer at NASA. Today,
this is a part of our everyday
lives.
Companies such as John
Deere must continually think
to the future with ideas such
as the driverless tractor and
much more. However, the
real ingenuity comes when a
concept becomes viable as a
product offering.
Precision agriculture’s
technology potential has been
discussed for several years.
But producers and experts
now agree that unless a new
technology can add dollars to
the bottom line today, such
hi-tech tools are really no
more than a hi-tech diver
sion.
Technologies such as GPS,
real-time yield monitors,
multilayer field mapping
software, and variable-rate
seeding and chemical appli
cation systems are readily
available on the open market
and each promise specific
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benefits. Yet, Dr. Kent Olson,
Department of Applied Eco
nomics, University of Minne
sota, contends that producers
must look beyond individual
tools to realize the benefits of
precision agriculture. He said
producers should think of
precision agriculture as a
holistic approach to farm
management.
“Once you start learning
about all the fancy gizmos,
it’s easy to think about new
technology as merely the pur
chase of another machine
another combine, another
tractor, said Olson. “But
technology such as precision
agriculture is more than me
chanical and physical ex
pertise —much more.”
In fact, precision agricul
ture is not a single technol
ogy, said Olson, but a “suite
of management strategies,
technologies, and practices”
that farmers can use to im
prove decision making in ag
ricultural production,
marketing, finance, and per
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Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, Novembar 4, 2000-A23
sonnel management.
Olson said the key to
making precision agriculture
work lies in understanding
how to integrate the technol
ogy and apply site-specific in
formation in making
decisions that meet whole
farm management goals.
Generally, those goals in
volve boosting efficiency and
profitability.
John Deere seems to have
taken Olson’s assessment of
precision agriculture to heart,
and it recently formed a spe
cial program and team of
people to deal specifically
with creating a precision ag
riculture package that in
tegrates technology into farm
equipment in a manner that
meets the farmer’s business
goals.
Barry Schaffter, vice presi
dent of this new precision ag
riculture group at John Deere
called Agricultural Manage
ment Solutions (AMS), said,
“The potential for this tech
nology is amazing, and part
of what we do is research new
applications for these tools,
such as the driverless tractor,
for example. But customers
want more than potential,
and they tell us that if we
can’t show them how to save
a dime with a new technol
ogy, they don’t want to put
another nickel into the ma
chinery.”
To accomplish this task,
the AMS group looks at the
whole farm to help producers
identify solutions in produc
tion, equipment manage
ment, agronomic practices,
and farm business manage
ment.
Part of this is creating pre
cision ag components that
work together and are easy to
operate. After all, if a new
technology is not easy to use,
it won’t be used, stresses
Schaffter. But ultimately,
said Terry Porter, John
Deere AMS marketing mana
ger, the goal of AMS, or any
precision agriculture system,
is to supply producers with
the right kind of information
and the means to analyze and
apply that information to
make better and more
profitable management
decisions.
As an example, consider a
task as basic as seed selection
and purchasing for the
coming planting season.
With the proper technology,
a farmer can turn this simple
task into a way to reduce
costs, save time, and eventu
ally increase yields.
“In this case, you need a
simple way to collect real
time, site-specific informa
tion such as field conditions,
tillage practices, seed varie
ties planted, and weather
conditions,” said Porter. He
recommends the John Deere
Field Doc data collection
system, which works in con
cert with Deere’s Star Fire re
ceiver, Green Star display,
and on-board mobile data
processor.
“It allows you to make
notes on the go, and it’s geo
referenced, so every time the
operator records information
or makes changes, the system
tags that data to a specific lo
cation in the field,’* said
Porter.
To continue this scenario,
producers then download
data from Field Doc to their
desktop computer and use
JDmap Deluxe software to
analyze the information. Ac
cording to Porter, JDmap
translates raw field data into
site-specific multilayer maps
and summaries the producer
uses to match seed perform
ance to seeding rates, ferti
lizer and chemical appli
cation rates, tillage practices,
soil types, and field drainage.
“One great feature of the
software is that it allows op-