The use of precision farming products continues to increase. With increasing input costs, producers are often looking for ways to adopt technology to make farming operations more efficient and productive. Guidance systems also reduce overlap in fields which leads to less passes across the field, less fuel and product use (i.e. seed, fertilizer, and herbicide), and fewer operator hours.
And since today’s high-tech seed isn’t cheap, if growers aren’t controlling where and how much of each type of seed they plant, they’re probably sacrificing yield potential and bottom line performance. SeedCommand from Ag Leader helps growers manage all of their planting operations, including seed population, planter performance, hybrid/variety mapping, split planting and variable rates.
“I particularly like being able to monitor my skips and doubles with the Advanced Seed Monitoring,” says Merrill Swanson, grower from Gilbert, Iowa. “When you change hybrids, you usually have a different seed size. When I see that I’m having skips or doubles because of that, I can adjust my seed meters and see that the problem’s fixed on the screen.”
To quantify the amount of overlap that occurs in a typical production setting, Iowa State University researchers partnered with two Iowa producers in 2011 who did not own any precision ag technologies. More than 2,500 acres of field operations were monitored and analyzed to determine typical overlap in central Iowa production systems. Results from these producer tests showed an average 3.3 percent overlap during planting operations. Given these overlap levels, the return on investment by using precision ag products can be directly measured. Read the full analysis here.
The bottom line is: precision technologies such as SeedCommand from Ag Leader can help you lower seed cost during planting season and improve yield potential at harvest time. Contact an Ag Leader dealer today.
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