Published: January 04, 2007 04:30 pm            

GPS, auto-steer becoming standard equipment

Originally published in the Dec. 29, 2006, print edition.

Looking for an indicator that Global Positioning System technology is having a major impact on agriculture today?

How about the fact that every John Deere tractor manufactured in 2006 was delivered “auto-steer ready,” and all of their 2007 combines will come factory equipped with the hydraulic sensors and flow meters basic to any of their AutoTrac systems.

“It’s coming on remarkably fast,” said Chad Arends of Kibble Implement in Montevideo. “Reduced operator fatigue, precise accuracy in your planting, your tillage, your harvesting and especially your spraying so you avoid wasteful overlaps are prime reasons why. Plus when fuel, fertilizer and chemical costs started ramping up, cutting down on input costs really prompted farmers to take a much closer look at what GPS has to offer.”

Deere, now four years into GPS technology, offers three AutoTrac options:

• SF1, accurate to 13 inches, at a cost of around $10,000 (a popular choice for tillage work);

• SF2, accurate to 4 inches, at a cost of around $15,000; and

• RTK, accurate to less than an inch, at a cost of around $25,000.

Much like trait technology fees in the seed business, you pay a “royalty fee” to John Deere for the basic technology regardless of which system you choose to go with.

“The $10,000 system is Deere’s effort to compete against lower-cost systems in the market, yet still have the reliability of the Deere name,” Arends said. All of their AutoTrac units have a one-year factory warranty, although he said they have yet to replace a system because of malfunction.

Arends provides three to five hours on-farm instruction to every buyer of an auto-steer system through Kibble Implement. When convenient, prospective buyers also have a classroom session at Kibble’s Montevideo or Redwood Falls locations.

“It’s like when we first started working on our office computers,” he said. “We were tentative for a bit. But auto steer units are much quicker understood by most farmers. In fact they’re eager to get at it as soon as they can.”

Another major player in GPS technology for agriculture is Trimble, with a system called the EZ-Steer, and available in any particular color a farmer needs to match up with his primary power. Arends said Deere also offers a universal GPS auto-steer package compatible with any major equipment.

Making every inch count
Montevideo-area farmer Robert Enevoldsen said GPS farming’s value comes from making every square inch count.

A five-year veteran of auto-steer technology, Enevoldsen started with John Deere’s parallel tracking system in 2001, and has used AutoTrac for the past three years. He also used row-finder technology with his crop sprayer starting in 2001. He currently uses John Deere’s SF2 system.

“Operator comfort is a key bonus. You’re not quite as stressed out at the end of the day,” Enevoldsen said. They run a 24-row, 60-foot-wide planter (30-inch) and a 12-row, 30-foot-wide planter. If working an irregular field, he first lays out the automatic direction line on the straight side of the field, then crosses over and does the same on the shorter side. His 12-row unit then works the three-cornered field while the 24-row does the longer, straight rows.

“With the auto steer that works so easily,” he said. “It speeds up the process. Even when we do our tillage, auto steer gets us over the field quicker.”

Enevoldsen said it was hard for his dad, now 65, to first accept this new technology. “But once he got on to it, if that system lost signal or quit working, he was on the phone right now saying, ‘get this fixed.’ Once you get used to it, it’s hard to give it up.”

Enevoldsen moves the base unit from his planter tractor to his tillage tractor to his sprayer. “We’re not mapping with our combine so we’re not using it with that equipment. We’ve got swath control on our sprayer. This spring we’re adding sonar, which automatically controls boom height above the soil surface regardless the lay of the land.” He sprays with a JD 4920 with a 120-foot boom so spray accuracy can be a challenge on uneven fields.

The bonus here is that when Enevoldsen moves his sprayer from field to field, the automatic direction heading is already in place. “I just go to that farm, that field, punch in my heading line and, boom, I’m there.”

Automatic boom shut-offs are another feature available for crop sprayers. “GPS is already driving your unit,” Arends said. “Now with this system it can read your spray coverage and automatically shut off your boom where needed to prevent over-spraying, or spraying an adjacent non-field area. It keeps you located in the field and lets you know what has been covered and what hasn’t.”

Maximizing productivity
For Franklin-area producer Joe Sullivan, GPS technology provides a keener, more accurate measurement of virtually all farming inputs “... to see what areas we can improve on. We’re trying to identify more things that contribute to productivity of a given field or a given hybrid than just knowing the averages.”

The Sullivans operate two 36-row, 22-inch planters for their several hundred acres of corn and soybeans. Once the planting season kicks in, weather-permitting, it’s sometimes a 24/7 push.

“A big reduction in operator fatigue is a huge plus at planting time,” Sullivan said. “It just boils down to getting a lot more done with the same amount of people, and your people aren’t stressed out. You gain a significant increase in productivity. I don’t know a figure that represents savings per acre but you’re always maximizing what you’re doing.”

The Sullivans used John Deere’s parallel tracking system for four years, then switched to AutoTrac SF2 for their 2006 crop year. “With two or more planters working the same field you need more accuracy, thus the SF2 choice which reads off six to eight satellites at any given time and gives you more repeatable accuracy.”

Another bonus at combining, according to Sullivan, is that you’re taking a full header and not getting stuck with a single row finish. While planting, the GPS system doesn’t permit any point row, or single-row “field cleanup” rounds.

Kibble’s Arends said the SF2 system requires at least five satellites to track properly but in Minnesota, 90 percent of the time the GPS is tracking seven to nine satellites. In rare instances, there may be a drop in tracking satellites. “But anything from (General Motors’) OnStar in your car to AutoTrac in your John Deere tractor is generally 100 percent predictable and reliable,” Arends said.

        

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