Content area
Full text
Farm "techies" don't just gather data. They track it and integrate it for more detailed, accurate assessments of their operations.
It used to be you could spot a farm "techie" by the yield monitor and GPS receiver in his combine. Not anymore. Now there is hardly a new combine being built without a yield monitor in it. And last year an estimated 40% of corn acres in North America went through a yield monitor, just 10 years after its introduction.
So just how do you tell the farm techies of today? Is it by their use of a pocket PC? Variable rate applicator? Soil penetronometer? Or digital camera?
Yes. And no. The techies use all those tools. But it is how they use them and to what extent that sets them apart from the rest of the farm population, which, by itself, is more high tech than the average group of consumers.
According to Mick Johnston, consultant with The Consulting Company (TCC), a GPS data-processing and consulting service, farmers who are at the top end of the technology curve use site-specific technologies not just as gee-whiz gadgets but as tools to make better management decisions.
"Most farmers are not using these tools for this purpose," Johnston explains. "They may be using a yield monitor to gather yield data to look at maps. But they are not necessarily putting a computer and receiver in their planter, tractor, sprayer, manure applicator or side-- dress machine as a management tool. They could be logging what they are doing when and where, and then taking that information back to the office and compiling it into a summary report to use for management decisions before the next spring."
Todd Kunau, owner of Kunau Implement in DeWitt, IA, agrees. "It is very common now using GPS for scouting fields and doing yield monitoring with a combine," he says. "That is very prevalent. today. But the people who are going the extra mile to get the benefit from the technology or the data they are accumulating - that is a little more unique."
Bryan Jorgensen, Dianne Barnett and Rodney Schmidt are three producers who are going that extra mile to get the benefits from using their high-tech, site-specific farming tools. They...