How Farm Tech Can Help With Better Planning

posted on Friday, October 25, 2019 in Ag-Pro Companies News

If you’ve been utilizing precision agriculture tools to assist in your growing and harvesting seasons, like John Deere’s StarFire™ 6000 Receiver and JDLink™, the data you collected during these last busy months can be put to good use in yet another way. This information can give a broader view of your farming efforts and can now be used to more accurately inform strategic plans for the future. For farmers who live in a part of the country that takes their off-season in the winter, like those in the Midwest or Southwestern tall crop growers, the end of harvest calls forth the crucial task of planning the next season.

So, while your field operation is drawing to a temporary close, this farm tech continues to work for you by helping uncover which parts of your operation delivered, what didn’t and how you’ll do it better next time. 

Farm Tech & John Deere’s Operations Center

The Operations Center from John Deere is a type of farm tech that can play an essential role in farming data management when paired with mobile apps and the right tools. It takes everything that happens in the real world on your farm, from guidance lines to soil and weather changes, and then stores this information in one easy place that you can access from your computer or mobile device, like your iPad.

This online precision agriculture tool takes all the data you have gathered over a given period of time and groups it into meaningful, usable information so you can prepare fields, plant and ultimately harvest better and even make real-time changes when you are doing field work. 

Making a Farming Plan with Precision Agriculture 

A good harvest is often due in part to careful planning and last year’s forecasts and predictions coming to fruition. The Operations Center can improve your planning efforts by reducing product and material waste. Seed and material costs can be kept lower by applying what you need, where you need it, at the right rate and depth.

This farm tech tool can give you an analysis of how and where your crops performed best and where they didn’t, so you can make the necessary adjustments to make sure they’ll do even better next year. You’ll also be able to develop variable rate prescriptions and utilize helpful agronomic reports to improve on other field management choices. Another critical way farmers rely on the Operations Center to help with their planning is to improve labor costs while increasing yield.

With help from the Operations Center, your equipment is better able to stay within its highly accurate satellite-guided boundaries and guidance lines so that you’re far less likely to have overlapping passes or accidentally drive over crops in narrow pass ways. When paired with the right equipment like ExactEmerge™, it also enables cab drivers to move at a faster rate without sacrificing product or planting depth.

For more information on some of the practical applications of John Deere’s precision agriculture tools and how the Operations Center helps our friends at the Molly Caren Farm at The Ohio State University with its planning efforts, take a look at the video below. 

Interested in learning more about how precision agriculture can benefit your farm? Come talk about your operation and your farming needs at your nearest Ag-Pro Dealer, we’d love to partner with you. 

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