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Producer has lots of reasons for going high-techBy Larry Dreiling Brad White has five reasons why he's a believer in precision agriculture. They are Dillan, Claire, Nolan, Cameron, and Katherine. "I have five kids," said White, an Exeter, Neb. producer. "We're going in lots of different directions all the time trying to keep up with them. My wife, Darcy, is a volleyball coach and Claire's involved with that. The time I save with these new products lets me be with all of them more." White, who operates on 1,400 acres, growing corn and some soybeans, doesn't claim to be an early adopter of technology. But, he has been adding precision ag products and services--primarily through his local co-op--over the years as he can afford them and has become comfortable with them. "I'm not really a gadget guy. I just see a need for something and when it's something I know I can use, I'll buy when I can afford it," White said. White's first stop in his adventures in precision agriculture was grid sampling. "This was sort of a way to stick my toe into it," White said. "Originally, I knew I needed to put some lime on the ground. It had a pH problem. We're usually short on phosphorus and zinc around here, too. "The pH was usually in the mid-five's. Now we're up in to the sixes. I think we've got most of the fields up to where it should be. Yields have steadily increased."
Sampling saves Grid sampling also has helped White save money in his operation, about 70 percent of which is under pivot irrigation. "It helps me now in knowing how much lime to add. There also were areas of the fields that didn't call for near as much lime as others. Grid sampling paid for itself by what I saved on product," White said. "Instead of broadcasting 100 pounds of fertilizer, you save on areas of the field where you don't need much. Also, I've learned there's areas of the field where it needs more, upwards of 300 pounds of fertilizer. Some areas were real low. That's something I didn't expect. At least it didn't call for three tons of lime or something like that. It at least puts everything in the right place." About five years ago, White added a yield monitor to his combine that he said has been a good choice. White said his precision agronomist, Matt Helmke, with the Plymouth, Neb.-based Farmers Cooperative, has been helpful to him in making these high-tech purchases. "I bought the monitor through the co-op and had Matt help me with the maps. After harvest, I'd bring my data card to him and let him work them up for me," White said. "The yield monitor has given me good information, particularly on hybrid selection. "It's also been good to give me information on where the weak spots on my field are. Once I've learned where those weak spots are, I then go in and get soil samples on those spots to see what's deficient and to figure out what to do after that."
Auto-steer choice The next thing White added was a light bar navigation system to his tractor, to replace the foam markers he used in the past to help keep his rows straight when planting. It tended to be a questionable choice of a purchase. "Sometimes working with that light bar doesn't work out quite right," White said. "My light bar was advertised with four-to-six inch accuracy but I never found that to be the case. If you'd stop the tractor for an hour to eat or fill the planter then start up again and you'd find the line was off." With all of the technological advances White has made in his operation, cost was the issue in advancing further. "Certainly it was with an auto-steer system. For one thing, I didn't have a new enough tractor," White said. "I would have had to spend extra money to put the extra things into the old one. "When I traded tractors, I figured that was the time to add some sort of auto-steer system." White was cautious about making such a purchase, primarily again because of price, but also because he had been somewhat disappointed with GPS-oriented technology in the past. "The one thing I see about all this is that some of these people kind of oversell this technology," White said, offering that the ease of use can actually take a long time to the point he's comfortable with it and he knows it's making a positive difference in his operation. "Variable rate application was something like that for me in the beginning. Putting things into practice from the data I saw was still like guessing to me. There are so many variables outside those maps we don't see that could be affecting yields that you really maybe don't know where certain problems are coming from. It could be weather, the seed selection-- different things. It took a while to trust it."
New system White recently purchased an MT745 "Cat" Challenger tractor. He didn't purchase a factory-installed auto-steer system with the tractor but instead purchased the tractor with the capability to install one later on. Soon after this fall's harvest, White began investigating auto steering systems and saw an ad for a complete Real Time Kinetics (RTK) system.The pacakge included the system and service and was in his price range. White was intrigued enough to learn more and then showed what he learned to his agronomist, Helmke. "When I saw the price, I called Matt, who said he didn't know much about this system, but that he'd find out. I bought one. He wound up being a dealer and I'm a customer, so we're learning this together," White said. "I had been looking at an auto-steer system for a while. I found that most of them were real expensive. This was something I could afford." White likes the look of the system, sited in the in-slot for the radio unit in his tractor cab, which is already filled with monitors and controls. "If you didn't know it was installed where the radio's supposed to be, you'd never know it was there," White said. The unit also includes an AM-FM-weatherband radio and a hookup for an mp3 player, so White still has his music.
New wrench added The system also has a cordless RTK base station with a run time of eight hours without recharging and a connection for an external charging socket. The base works on a standard cellular network that is the backbone for a new service tool called Virtual Wrench, a remote service and diagnostics capability that eliminates the cost of conventional on-farm servicing. Overall, White thinks the cost of adding precision agriculture tool to his operation has been worthwhile. "Grid sampling has helped the most so far. With the price of fertilizer the way it is, you need to know where it ought to go. You don't have to apply what you don't need," White said. "I think this RTK system will help the most down the line." White can't wait to use the system for a full first season of spring planting. "Auto-steer is a great idea, especially when you want to get into the field and complete your planting as quickly as possible," White said. "You can work longer throughout the day and at the end of the day you're not spent physically or mentally. That's important when you get home." And back to those five reasons he finds precision agriculture so imporant--his family.
Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117 or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com. 1/28/08 Date: 1/18/08
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