New Vacuum Planter Electric Row Shutoff from Ag Leader

Kurt LawtonGeneral

Insights WeeklyIf you’re thinking about adding precision farming planter row shutoff technology, you should look into the SureVac electric shutoff that AgLeader now offers, designed for John Deere vacuum planters.

Claimed to be easily installed, SureVac is designed for the Deere Pro-Series XP row units, but is compatible with any Deere vacuum seed meter made in the last 20 years. It works with all Deere corn and soybean seed disks, as well as the eSet vacuum disk from Precision Planting.

“We are excited to offer our customers another option for row-by-row planter control. SureVac allows for expanded seed meter compatibility, providing growers more flexibility in their operations,” says Roger Zielke, New Business Development Manager for Ag Leader Technology. “About this time in 2009, we introduced the SureStop electric row clutch for chain-drive planters. Due to its popularity and customer requests, we developed the SureVac option for the non-chain drive Pro-Series row units.”

Using GPS, Ag Leader’s SeedCommand or a compatible planter control system communicates with SureVac to turn planter sections on/off based on field maps and already-planted areas. The shutoff stops seed flow by cutting off the vacuum at the top of the seed disk. Planting is stopped and seeds fall back into the seed meter’s seed pool. When the shutoff device is pulled away from the seed disk, vacuum is restored and planting continues as normal.

Farmer tested. This week I spoke with Daren Lauritsen, who tested the SureVac system on his 24-row John Deere planter last spring on 1,900 acres of corn near Atlantic, Iowa.

“Row shutoff should be standard on planters, because you really don’t know how valuable it can be until you try it. The install was super easy; we just changed out the doors on the seed meter and installed the cables. I used my Insight monitor and WAAS GPS-correction and it worked really well,” Lauritsen says.

The biggest benefit he found is that he doesn’t have to worry about taking a big planter into small fields. “You just go in there and paint the field (like the monitor shows), and the planter takes care of not double-planting the point rows and headlands,” he adds.

“SureVac will provide growers with a tangible return on investment with reduced seed costs and increased yield potential in areas that are typically double-planted. However, growers will also appreciate the quick, easy installation,” Zielke says. “To install, you simply remove the manufacturer vacuum cover and replace it with SureVac. Its quick, clean and takes less than five minutes per row.”

SureVac availability will be limited through select dealers for the 2010 growing season. Full production is expected to begin in the second half of 2010.

To learn more about SureVac, see a video interview Chuck posted this week.

Leica Geosystems Names Harlan Little North America Business Mgr.

Chuck ZimmermanLeica Geosystems

I’d like to introduce the newest sponsor for our AgWired.com website and that’s Leica Geosystems. They are also providing supporting sponsorship here on Precision.AgWired.com as well.

Today the company announced that Harlan Little has been named the North American Business Manager for Leica Geosystems’ agriculture group.

Little started with Leica Geosystems in late January, and will be based out of Leica Geosystems NAFTA headquarters in Atlanta.

With more than 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, management and precision agriculture, Little is a great fit for the Leica agriculture team in North America.

“Harlan is a great addition to the team and brings with him a wealth of ideas and industry contacts to help grow our business throughout the U.S. and Canada,” said Rob Kiernan, global sales and marketing manager. “We are ready to take our business to the next level with new leadership and a suite of new products being introduced this year.”
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Ag Leader Technology Booth

Chuck ZimmermanAg Leader, IA Power Farming Show, Video

Just in case you weren’t able to attend the Iowa Power Farming Show, here’s what you missed in the Ag Leader Technology booth. Jess Ahrens was my tour guide and walked me around the displays of the displays. Your next chance to catch up with Ag Leader Technology will be at the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, KY. Cindy will be there providing coverage.

Iowa Power Farming Show Photo Album

USDA Offers One Stop Shop for Geospatial Data

Cindy ZimmermanResources, Satellite

If you are in the market for geospatial data, check out USDA’s Geospatial Data Gateway that “provides One Stop Shopping for natural resources or environmental data at anytime, from anywhere, to anyone.”

The latest must-have product in the geospatial shop is new satellite images depicting agricultural land cover across most of the nation for the 2009 crop year from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).

The images, referred to as cropland data layers (CDL), are a useful tool for monitoring crop rotation patterns, land use changes, water resources and carbon emissions.

These crop-specific, digital data layers are suitable for use in geographic information systems (GIS) applications. They can be used by agribusinesses, farmers, government agencies, researchers and academic institutions to study pesticide risk, epidemiology, transportation, fertilizer usage, carbon dioxide flux and other topics.

NASS produced the CDLs using satellite images observed at 56-meter (0.775 acres per pixel) resolution and collected from the Resourcesat-1 Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS), Landsat Thematic Mapper and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The collection of images was then categorized using on-the-ground farm information including field location, crop type, land cover, elevation, tree canopy and urban infrastructure.

The images are currently available for 47 of the 48 contiguous states, all except Florida, which is still in process. Get them on either the Geospatial Data Gateway website or from the NASS Research and Development division.

Ag Leader SureVac

Chuck ZimmermanAg Leader, Audio, IA Power Farming Show, Planting, seed, Video

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

Monsanto Helping Grow Communities

Chuck ZimmermanAudio, IA Power Farming Show, Monsanto

MonsantoThere are booths on the floor of three different buildings at the Iowa Power Farming Show. They’re also in the hallways. I stopped at this one to learn about the Monsanto sponsored America’s Farmers Grow Communities Project. Lots of farmers were stopping by to sign up their favorite local charity. To tell us all about it I interviewed Gayla Daugherty, Monsanto Communications Manager.

She says it’s a new project for farmers to sign up a local non-profit of their choice to win via a random drawing. There are 179 counties involved in Iowa/Missouri/Arkansas and you can see them listed on the official rules page.

Plant $2,500 in your community and watch it grow.

As a farmer, you care for our land and grow our economy. You make everyone’s lives better – locally, nationally and globally. To thank you, Monsanto wants to make a contribution in your name to your local community with the America’s Farmers Grow Communities™ Project.

One nonprofit community organization in each eligible county will receive a $2,500 award. It’s up to farmers like you to help decide where it goes.

Together we can grow rural America…one community at a time. Apply now.

You can listen to my interview with Gayla below.

Iowa Power Farming Show Photo Album

Thanks to Ag Leader Technology for sponsoring our coverage of the Iowa Power Farming Show.

Precision Applications for Livestock

Cindy ZimmermanAg Leader, Audio, GPS, Precision Pays Podcast

Crop farmers seem to get most of the cool tools when it comes precision technology, but there are definitely applications for livestock producers who want to keep track of their animals and make grazing areas more productive and that’s our topic for this edition of the Precision.AgWired.com Podcast, sponsored by Ag Leader Technology.

The Precision Agriculture Research Group (PARG) at the University of New England in Armidale has been studying the benefits of real time GPS tracking for monitoring livestock activity, according to Dr. Mark Trotter. “GPS tracking of livestock has been around for several years and a lot of research has come out of Texas, Oregon, Kansas and other places in the states,” Mark says. Mostly this has involved collars on the animals that store information which can be downloaded to find out where they’ve been. “But we are starting to see a shift towards real time GPS devices where the information is transmitted back to the researcher or producer to give them an idea of where their animals are in real time.” Mark says they have been demonstrating the value of precision technology in crop and livestock production through a project called Clever Cattle and Cropping Systems.

Mark and his PARG colleagues will be presenting some of their research at the 10th International Conference on Precision Agriculture July 18-21 in Denver. Listen to the podcast to find out more.

Subscribe to the Precision.AgWired.com Podcast here.

Listen to or download the podcast here:

Blue Delta Dealer Network Announced

Chuck ZimmermanAg Leader, Audio, Dealers, IA Power Farming Show

Mike OlsonAg Leader Technology has announced the Blue Delta Dealer Network. At the Iowa Power Farming Show I spoke with Mike Olson to learn more about it. He’s pictured working in the booth here at the show.

Basically, Ag Leader Technology has developed a new elite precision farming distribution network in an effort to bring more structure to a growing precision agriculture community.

The network is designed to help precision farming dealers become well-rounded precision farming experts, as well as help farmers locate and identify elite precision farming dealerships throughout North America.

“There are thousands of precision farming dealerships and specialists out there; our goal with Blue Delta is to create an opportunity for the best of these dealers to separate themselves with in-depth training, and increased product and marketing sup- port so they can become an even better resource for their customers,” says Mike Olson, North American Sales Manager. “We recognize the end user’s most important resource is their precision farming dealer. This is a great way to bring more consistency and expertise to the marketplace.”

Blue DeltaAg Leader unofficially launched the Blue Delta network in December at the grand opening of Ag Leader Academy in Ames. Since that time Ag Leader has been working with dealers on intense product training and marketing efforts.

“Our goal is to provide these dealers with a number of tools to help them better educate and sup- port their precision farming customers,” continues Olson. “We’ve learned that the more educated growers are about precision farming, the more they embrace it. We believe this will have a significant impact on the industry.”

You can listen to my interview with Mike below.

Iowa Power Farming Show Photo Album

Visiting Iowa Power Farming Show

Chuck ZimmermanAg Leader, Audio, IA Power Farming Show, Video

Tom Junge IA Power Farming ShowI’m attending my first ever Iowa Power Farming Show courtesy of our sponsor Ag Leader Technology. The first person I met this morning was show manager, Tom Junge. The show is conducted by the Iowa-Nebraska Equipment Dealers Association.

Tom says they represent about 400 dealers and have been doing the show for 55 years. They have a show in December in Nebraska now too. Here at the Iowa show they use 3 different buildings with 6 acres of exhibits. They’re hoping for another record attendance this year like they had last year. There’s a lot of precision technology on display here and Tom says it has become an integral part of farming and the show.

You can listen to my interview with Tom below. I also uploaded a short video clip from above the show floor with my iPhone so you can see what it’s like.

And of course I’ve got photos for you in the Iowa Power Farming Show Photo Album.

Planter Row Control Can Save You Money

Kurt LawtonAg Leader, Displays, Equipment, Guidance, Harvesting, Insights Weekly, Planting, seed

Insights WeeklyAs 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