Okay, so you can get your markets, make phone calls, take video and pictures, email, text, browse the web, edit documents, listen to music and podcasts and now you can control your irrigation equipment. All from your phone.
With the introduction of Valley Tracker Mobile, irrigators now have access to the latest technology for remote management of their pivots and linears.
The Tracker Mobile feature is a combination of Smartphone/PDA technology that uses Web access to retrieve monitoring and control options from the Valley Tracker. It provides irrigators with additional visual access to irrigation information from the convenience of their Smartphone or PDA.
“Valley Tracker Mobile makes monitoring and controlling irrigation equipment easier than ever,” said Mark Ringenberg, Product Application Manager-Valley Controls. “Using a Web-enabled Smartphone with a Windows mobile browser, an irrigator can follow the status of each pivot and control its operations with just a touch, no matter his or her location.”
So another conference is over and tomorrow I’ll be moving on to Jackson, MS for the Appaloosa Horse Club National Show. This will be the first time it’s being held there and from what I’ve heard already, things are going well.
Here’s my wrap up post from the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy conference. I learned a lot from the presentations here and hope the interviews have helped you too.
What we know and what we need to know was Peggy Caswell’s, USDA-ERS, topic here at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy conference. She says we need to know things about how farmers or the providers of biofuels and feed stocks are going to have to change the way they do business. She used the example of having to look at different types of contracts and financing.
The issue of investment and financing for ethanol plants and bio refineries in general was addressed today by Chris Groobey, Baker & McKenzie, LLP. He works on project financing with investors and lenders and mostly in renewable fuels. He painted a pretty bleak picture.
We had two Under Secretaries talk to us here today. It was my first time to meet our USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, Gale Buchanan. He was here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference to talk about the need for research in a growing bio economy. In fact, he sees a need for a tremendous amount of research to address the opportunities presented by the whole energy picture.
When it comes to infrastructure needs for a bio economy our rural road system is a key component. To speak about it here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference we heard from Frank Dooley, Purdue University. He sees a big increase in grain production, primarily in the midwest. With that comes a growing demand for transportation. He thinks we should be concerned because most of the corn will be moved by truck and that’s going to impact rural roads. He also sees an increase in rail transportation but not significantly.
We hear a lot about the growth in ethanol production but do you know how it gets from the plant to where it needs to be to enter our fuel supply? How about rail car? During our discussion on the infrastructure needs of a Transition To A Bio Economy, we heard from Paul Hammes, Union Pacific Railroad. Of course his focus was on rail infrastructure and as it relates to biofuels. Specifically, he spoke to the different pieces of that supply chain like rail cars, the rail network and unload/load capacity.
My good friend Tom Dorr, USDA Under Secretary for Rural Development, was our opening speaker for day two of Farm Foundation’s Transition To A Bio Economy conference. He was glad to see the golden ZimmComm microphone once again! We visited for a while before the session got started.