View from the Cab: Always learning
By Kent Casson
I joined countless other farmers from around the Midwest to learn about agronomic research and technology during the Precision Planting Winter Conference near Tremont recently.
The annual conference covered planting, spraying, soil fertility and data management.
“There are tools that can be added to your current pieces of equipment,” explained Precision Planting’s Bryce Baker.
Winter Conference has a goal of teaching the farmer in order to improve their operation for the coming year.
“They leave better equipped to face new challenges,” added Baker.
Precision Planting has expanded from optimizing how seeds are placed with the planter to in-cab monitoring and now sprayer controls. The idea is still helping farmers with efficiency and improving their bottom line.
Growers can now only put chemical exactly where they want it by controlling sprayer nozzles and Precision Planting has developed a vision system to spot and target weeds out in the field.
“That vision system allows your sprayer to go through the field and within that standing crop, identify weeds,” notes Luke Stuber, a Precision Planting product engineer and farmer.
With this system, the sprayer nozzles only turn on when weeds are spotted. Instead of broadcast spraying 100 percent of your acres, you are only spraying those areas where there are actually weeds growing.
Another session of Winter Conference focused on fertility and how farmers can better measure their soils and come up with fertilizer recommendations before implementing a plan to maximize their fertilizer investment.
“We are trying to encourage farmers to understand the process all the way through,” said Cory Muhlbauer, R&D Agronomist with Precision Planting.
Precision Planting has a new system which is a fully-automated soil lab. This is launching in limited quantities this year. The lab eliminates error and variability, according to Muhlbauer.
It is always an information packed experience at Winter Conference and the steak lunch isn’t bad either.
The latest ag news, podcasts and market updates can be found at www.centralillinoisfarmnetwork.com.
