Before we know it the fall harvest will be here and as growers hit the fields to reap the bounty, John Deere has released new software for its Operations Center to assist growers. The John Deere Operations Center provides tools and features that enable growers easy access to farm information that better helps them to manage operations. Included in the release are new features such as Variety Locator, which automatically detects the crop variety being harvested as well as Harvest ID, Cotton Maps, which makes it easy to identify locations and track cotton quality back to where it was grown. Other features include new Tillage Maps and Speed Maps, which offer insights into which variables affect yield and help to round out operational data layers for performance analysis.

“This latest release is a big step forward for our precision ag solutions,” said Ryan Borcherding, product manager, John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group. “These new features, coupled with the existing abilities to share data and collaborate with trusted partners, give the farmer more reasons than ever to manage their farm data online.”

While not an exhaustive list, here is some additional information on several of the Operations Center’s new tools and features:

• Variety Locator – Allows usage of Variety Locator information (documented when planting) to enable the John Deere in-cab display in the combine to automatically detect and document the crop variety being harvested.
• Tillage and Speed Maps – Assists in the evaluation of the performance of tillage operations with documentation maps on target depth (GreenStar™ 3 2630 Display only). Enhances insight into which variables affect yield with speed maps for seeding and tillage operations.
• John Deere Harvest ID, Cotton Maps – Improves traceability of where each cotton module is harvested and leads to better correlation between input decisions and cotton quality.
• Draw Field Boundaries and Freeform Zones – Released in April, the Operations Center now allows new fields to be added by manually drawing boundaries, which can be sent to the in-cab display as an operational boundary. Also added to the Prescription Creator by Agrian® is the ability to create freeform zones when building prescriptions based off of soil or harvest maps.

“To get the most out of the Operations Center, we highly recommend using JDLink™ Connect, which seamlessly connects the machine online and takes the burden of data collection and transmission off of the farmer,” added Borcherding. “It also rounds out agronomic data with machine data to give the full picture of what is happening on the farm. Our goal is to ensure that the job in the field happens exactly as planned and is documented with minimal effort, so growers spend less time managing data and more time doing what they love — farming.”