Precision agriculture is hitting the rice industry in Japan. At least it’s in R&D now at the Furukawa Agricultural Research Station. I interviewed Yoshisada Nogasaka, Research Team for Farm Machinery and Systems for NARC, the National Agricultural Research Center. He’s the guy who’s developing the software to run the prototype Autonomous Rice Transplanter we saw on demonstration at the Furukawa …
Autofarm and Raven Industries Expand Collaboration
It seems like the precision agriculture companies are doing a lot of collaborating these days. It makes sense when you consider how many different components have to work together from software to satellites to hardware. Here’s the latest announcement from Autofarm and Raven Industries. AutoFarm and Raven Industries announce the expansion of a collaborative agreement for product development opportunities following …
Trimble-Dickey-John Hybrid Precision Agriculture
The first press conference of the day here at the Farm Progress Show was held jointly by Trimble and Dickey-John. On the stage are Jim Stephens, Trimble Ag Media Relations, Erick Arveson, GM, Trimble Ag Division and Chris Tarpley, VP of Sales and Marketing, Dickey-John. The companies announced that they’ve joined forces to offer precision farming solutions using their combined …
Sprayers and Spray Controlling From John Deere
Here’s where we got to see new sprayers in action at the John Deere product introduction. We had three presenters including Iowa farm brothers Brent and Lee Madden and Adam Hart. They also talked about how some of the new John Deere precision ag equipment works with these sprayers to more precisely apply product. You can watch a portion of …
Getting Precise With John Deere Upgrades
Kayla Reynolds works in the John Deere Ag Management Solutions area just like Mike Park. She was our teacher in the “classroom” part of our media/analysts session this week at the John Deere product introduction. Kayla focused on 4 main topics related to precision ag. They are long range RTK, shading optimization, GS2 rate controller expansion and Swath Control Pro …
Scalable Accuracy in Precision Ag Products
At the John Deere product introduction we got to see some big iron in action. One demo involved this 9630T which has an amazing stability functionality built into it including a new AirCushion walking I-beam suspension system. While I was at this field station I interviewed Mike Park, Factory Marketing Manager, Ag Management Solutions. Mike talks about John Deere’s precision …
Precision Ag by Croplife
At the 2007 InfoAg Expo I had a nice conversation with Paul Schrimpf, editor, CropLife Media Group. His company was one of the key organizers of the event and the Precision Ag Awards from the Precision Ag Institute. In the photo he was announcing the award winners. While talking with Paul he explains how they are involved with the conference. …
Riding With TeeJet Technologies at InfoAg
During the 2007 InfoAg Conference I got to go on a ride and drive with Brian Mathis, TeeJet Technologies. They’ve got a demo unit for their products set up on a Kubota utility vehicle which works very well for situations like this and it’s a lot easier to haul around than the alternative. Today they were demonstrating their auto steer …
A Productive InfoAg Conference.
I know I haven’t posted much from the InfoAg Conference but don’t think I’ve been slacking off. I think I’ve conducted 15 audio interviews and one video clip as well as about 79 photos. There isn’t a convenient room for media to work in here so that’s made it kind of difficult to be on the floor and in the …
Precision Ag Awards
At this morning’s opening session of the 2007 InfoAg Conference several awards were presented by Paul Schrimpf, group editor, Croplife Media Group. Receiving the awards were: Arthur F. Lange, Ph.D., Trimble Navigation Limited Scott A. Shearer, Ph.D., University of Kentucky Norm Teegardin, Farm Works Software