Cotton farmers, working with Clemson University, are achieving 30 to 50 percent nitrogen savings by side-dressing–without losing any yield, according to a recent report in Southeast Farm Press. For the past three years Clemson researchers at the Edisto Research and Education Center in Blackville, S.C., have been testing three different options for variable rate application of side-dress nitrogen on cotton. … Read More
Six New Products From Ag Leader Technology
Last week, Ag Leader Technology made a big splash by announcing their new precision farming technology collaboration with AutoFarm. Along with that big news, they also launched six new products. Here’s a brief look. INTEGRA™ Display • Rugged, moisture-resistant design featuring a 12.1-inch full-color touchscreen with high-definition mapping. • Core functionality includes: built-in manual guidance, full-screen mapping, planter and application … Read More
Ag Leader Aligns With AutoFarm and Launches New Products
Big news this week in the world of precision agriculture. Ag Leader Technology not only launched new products, it announced a new alliance with AutoFarm. This new collaboration brings together popular and successful precision farming products from Ag Leader with the latest embedded and integrated steering solutions from AutoFarm. Yesterday, I caught up with company founder and President Al Myers … Read More
GPS Accuracy: How Accurate Is Accurate?
If you’re familiar with yield mapping, automatic boom section control or other tasks that require a GPS signal, you may not truly understand how it works…or you may not care as long as it works, right! Let me simplify things. Basically, 11,000 miles from earth is a constellation of satellites (between 24 and 32 at any given time) strategically placed and … Read More
Raven Buys Cellular RTK Precision Farming Technology
Raven just purchased a Canadian company that uses cell tower networks to deliver RTK signals. Ranchview, a start-up company, develops products that use cellular networks instead of the traditional radio systems that are typically used to deliver RTK (Real Time Kinematic) corrections to GPS enabled equipment. RTK corrections improve the accuracy of GPS equipment. The network can also be used … Read More
Talk Precision Farming With Your Seed Dealer
First off, I order 12 consecutive days of sunshine across the US so we can keep those yield monitors spinning to map data—to help close out a very odd summer and fall. Thinking of brighter days ahead, be sure to make mental/written notes as harvest progresses, because hybrid/variety selection time is upon us. To that end, I talked this week … Read More
Hi-Tech Wired Magazine Talks Precision Farming
Always good to see high technology magazines talk about precision agriculture that’s happening down on the farm. My favorite hi-tech pub, Wired, just posted a nice story on their website: “Self-Steered Tractors and UAVs: Future Farming Is (Finally) Now.” A lot of the story was based on Idaho grower Robert Blair, who was named PrecisionAg’s 2009 Precision Farmer of the … Read More
A Precision Gator
John Deere has now updated its popular autonomous R-Gator utility vehicle with a refined chassis, based from the M-Gator military platform vehicle. The go-anywhere R-Gator now features independent suspension and improved ground clearance. And it also boasts a faster top speed, travelling up to 35 mph in manual mode. “Since we’re always looking to improve our products, we’ve been running … Read More
Deere Donates Precision Ag Tractor to Iowa State
Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering students at Iowa State University will get to play with and learn from the latest tractor technology thanks to a generous donation from John Deere. Tony Kajewski, continuing improvement engineering manager at John Deere Waterloo Tractorworks, presented gold keys to the tractor to Jonathan Wickert, dean of engineering, and Joe Colletti, senior associate dean of agriculture … Read More
Ethanol Could Improve Diesel Engine Efficiency
Using ethanol mixed with water in diesel engines could make them more efficient and reduce emissions. National Corn Growers Association chairman Bob Dickey is also chairman of CleanFlex Power Systems, which is so new they haven’t built a website yet, but what they have done is developed a method to efficiently use ethanol in diesel engines. Dickey started the idea … Read More