Precision Ag Awards Presented at #InfoAg16

Cindy Zimmerman August 5, 2016

PrecisionAg Executive Editor Paul Schrimpf presents award to Dr. Brian Arnell, OSU

The PrecisionAg Institute was celebrating a decade of the PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence at this year’s InfoAg Conference in St. Louis. The winners each year have devoted their careers to the technology that improves crop production stewardship, agronomy, and efficiency and this year was no different.

The 2016 Educator/Researcher of the Year is Dr. Brian Arnall, Associate Professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Oklahoma State University. His program focuses on implementing precision ag technologies and nutrient management with emphasis on site-specific techniques.

The 2016 Legacy Award was presented posthumously to Dr. Marvin Stone who was a Regents Professor at Oklahoma State University (OSU) for 24 years, lecturing in the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering department. During his time at OSU, he authored nearly 100 papers, received millions of dollars in grants, and taught legions of young, aspiring engineers while mentoring and advising dozens of graduate students across multiple disciplines. Tragically, Marvin and his wife Bonnie died on October 24 last year after being struck by an automobile following the OSU Homecoming Parade.

PrecisionAg Farmer of the Year – Craige Mackenzie of New Zealand

The 2016 PrecisionAg Farmer of the Year is Craige Mackenzie, a dairy and crop farmer from Methven, New Zealand. In 2010, Craige and daughter, Jemma, established Agri-Optics Ltd., New Zealand’s first precision agriculture service company providing precision ag tools and services to NZ farming systems with a focus on field sensing (crop sensing and Electro Magnetic soil surveying) and spatial data management solutions.

The Crop Adviser/Entrepreneur of the Year award went to Ag Partners, LLC which provides products, services and market access in the areas of grain, agronomy, feed, and petroleum. The Iowa-based company has developed and manages InSiteCDM, acrop data management program that helps producers maximize profits and make more efficient inputs.

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CropTrak Partners with The Weather Company

Kelly Marshall August 5, 2016

CropTrak President Aaron Hutchinson doesn’t believe in just sitting still. He’s always moving his company forward, from updating the company’s name (you may remember them as iCrop Trak) to upgrading the weathers solutions provided by his company. At InfoAg this week the company announced a move to partner with The Weather Company. This IBM owned weather solution will offer Crop Trak customers not just weather data, but very precise, global information.

“It means, for our large, corporate customers who are global- we do business in more than 58 countries around the globe today- it means we can actually respond to their weather requests at a higher rate than we do today. And it may mean we have access to some new types of weather products, maybe in the future, that we can pass along to our clients as part of being part of the API,” Hutchinson explains to AgWired.

“We’re helping to provide the very, very precise weather information so they can help their customers make better decision across the world,” adds Carrie Gillespie, Account Manager for The Weather Company.

IBM solutions mean customers can pull in data to do all sorts of things, from predicting crop yields to making a better prediction about what seed to plant.

You can hear my full interview with Hutchinson and Gillespie here: Interview with Crop Trak and The Weather Company

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Two Pass Weed Control Back In Style

Lizzy Schultz August 5, 2016

Chris Reat, Corn Segment Product Manager at FMC Corporation, was on hand during the 2016 Ag Media Summit to discuss the benefits of using a two pass system for weed control, and the ways it can help protect your yields this season.

“The two pass system is really starting to come back in vogue because of the challenges we’re having with some of the glyphosate resistant weeds and other tough to control weeds out there,” said Reat in an interview during Ag Media Summit.”We’ve gotten by as systems have allowed us with one pass systems, but two pass is becoming more popular because it works.”

For growers looking into two pass systems, Reat suggests FMC’s Anthem Maxx as a pre product with Solstice as a follow up, and stressing the importance of evaluating the correct application timing when utilizing a two pass system.

“That combination offers three different modes of action, and it allows them to control the weeds before they come up, but if they do see some late season weeds start to come up, controlling them with Solstice has been super effective,” he said. “”You can go as early as 45 days pre with Anthem Maxx, we usually like to keep it a little closer than that so it extends your window of coverage, but the flexibility of Anthem Maxx is that you can go post with it as well, so once you get it in the barn, you have lots of options with it.”

Listen to Chuck’s full interview with Chris here:
Chris Reat, FMC

View and download photos from the event here: 2016 AMS Photo Album

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AgGateway Advances Solutions for Data Management

Joanna Schroeder August 4, 2016

Progress on the AgGateway consortium was delivered to attendees of InfoAg this week in St. Louis, Missouri. The non-profit was founded to address eConnectivity needs in agriculture as the industry develops and adopts more powerful tools to increase efficiency and productivity. One way this is being achieved is through data exchange. This year AgGateway announced new standards, models and other resources that will improve the ability of growers to easily manage their data and the organization’s progress in these areas was featured during the show.

To learn more, Chuck Zimmerman spoke with John Deere’s Chip Donahue. John Deere is one of the founding companies, along with more than a dozen more, of AgGateway. Donahue said they are getting ready to launch version one of ADAPT, the open-source Agricultural Data Application Programming Toolkit. He said that the program was first made available to the public in February and it’s a data model with the ability to convert from one format, such as a John Deere format into a Case format into an ISO format.

“The program simplifies the ability to exchange data between systems whether its from a machine into a software system or between software systems,” explained Donahue.

Donahue highlighted some of the resources that AgGateway provides including:

ADAPT is being adopted by Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) developers and terminal manufacturers;
AgGateway Core Documents for Field Operations been made available through the ADAPT data model and continue to be enhanced;
Documentation from the Standardized Precision Ag Data Exchange (SPADE) Project for interoperability; and
New irrigation standards from the Precision Ag Irrigation Language (PAIL) Project for better irrigation management.

The organization is also working in other areas including crop scouting, crop nutrition, telematics and commodity grain movement.

AgGateway is currently in the process of testing plug-ins and then licensing those to the organization’s software partners. Donahue said that the technology is open-source so it’s available globally for anyone to use and they are promoting ADAPT to the software industry.

Learn more about ADAPT and the work of AgGateway in Chuck’s interview with Donahue here: Interview with Chip Donahue, John Deere

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#InfoAg16 Hints at Future for @JohnDeere

Kelly Marshall August 4, 2016

Jeremy Leifker leads the product strategy and marketing group at John Deere, a division responsible for bringing new ideas to the company pipeline. While much of what is in the works remains a secret, Leifker took time at InfoAg to tell AgWired about a theme that is important to what John Deere develops.

Telematics, or remote measurements, are an important part of the future, Leifker says. At John Deere that product is known as JD Link, and it assess what’s happening in the machine at all times. “Right now details really matter, so having confidence in everything you do to the field, how that equates to the bottom line, having that remote measurement is critical to do that, so you get that with JD Link,” he explains.

Of course, data is one thing, making sense of it is another. That’s why John Deere’s Operations Center is such a big deal. The platform is a tool open to many companies– businesses that offer a service to the grower and do it really well. In the Operations Center a grower can input his data and have it sync with any of the many services he chooses. While (of course!) John Deere has great solutions, other products may specialize in measuring profit lose, or helping growers organize the work day. This connectivity is the future of agriculture, Leifker believes.

“Getting that integrated for the farmers is really key, so I’d say that’s another theme around integration, and a lot of that happens on the back side.”

Overall, much of John Deere’s product strategy focuses on shortening the amount of time it takes from discovering a problem to providing users with a solution. Right now the team works with a handful of growers in the U.S. and Canada throughout the entire process of developing a solution, making sure they keep in close touch to address concerns as they happen. John Deere customers can look forward to the results of that teamwork hitting the market in the next two years.

To hear more about the future of product development at John Deere, listen to my full interview here: Jeremy Leifker, John Deere

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New AAEA President – Mike Wilson

Chuck Zimmerman August 4, 2016

The new President of the American Agricultural Editors Association (AAEA) is Penton Farm Progress executive editor Mike Wilson, also one of the newly named Fellows of the AAEA.

Here in this photo, Mike is mentoring students during the Ag Media Summit along with JoAnn Alumbaugh.

I spoke with Mike at the conclusion of this year’s AMS to find out what his plans are as the new leader of the organization.

Learn more in this week’s program: ZimmCast with Mike Wilson

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Focus on Integration for @CropTrak at #InfoAg16

Cindy Zimmerman August 4, 2016

Farm management information software company CropTrak had a lot to talk about at the InfoAg Conference this week in St. Louis.

CropTrak’s Aaron Hutchinson says they’ve had a lot of focus on integration with other companies this year. “One of them is CDMS,” he said. “This year they allowed us access to their chemical, crop protection and nutrient libraries and we’ve actually integrated that into our mobile and desktop tools.” Another collaboration is with The Weather Company as it is working agricultural weather information into its services.

Learn more about what’s new with CropTrak in this interview: Interview with Aaron Hutchinson, CropTrak

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LFR Technology Added to Ethos XB

Lizzy Schultz August 4, 2016

FMC has added their Capture LFRtechnology to their Ethos XB insecticides, and the result is a first-of-it’s kind in-furrow solution, offering broad spectrum defense for corn seedlings against soil pests and diseases throughout the critical growth stage when most yield potential is set.

Bob Hooten, Midwest Technical Support Manager for FMC, was on hand during the 2016 Ag Media Summit to discuss FMC’s LFR technology and what adding Ethos XB to the new platform of LFR products means for growers moving forward.

“A lot of growers are putting starter fertilizer right in furrow, and they need protection from seedling insects. Capture LFR stays suspended in fertilizer, it’s designed that way, and while it’s currently one of the top products out there that growers have been using, it’s really just the base that gives you the insect control,” said Hooten in an interview during the 2016 Ag Media Summit. “We’re expanding and adding to that platform now, and Ethos XB is one of the first products that we’re going to be bringing to that platform.”

Another part of FMC’s expansion of the Capture LFR platform is the inclusion of VGR Soil Amendment, which is designed to help plants better utilize moisture and phosphorus uptake by growing the larger root systems that are necessary for bigger yields.

“A better root system allows the plant to withstand stresses a lot easier because the plant is just healthier, and it allows the plant to grow to its full potential in yield,” said Hooten. “Capture LFR itself is bringing about 11 bushels more to the acre, and we’re only going to release products in the new LFR platform that will bring growers more money on the bottom end.”

Listen to Chuck’s full interview with Bob here:
Interview with Bob Hooten, FMC

View and download photos from the event here: 2016 AMS Photo Album

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#Farming is Teamwork for @JohnDeere Precision

Cindy Zimmerman August 3, 2016

The InfoAg Conference in St. Louis this week is all about farmers and industry working together as a team to increase productivity and profitability and John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group (ISG) is all about teamwork.

“John Deere recognizes what our part is in precision ag and that we’re not the total solution,” said Deere Information Solutions business director Lane Arthur, who presented at the InfoAg Conference. “We recognize that a grower needs those other partners – ag input providers, ag retailers, software developers – and we’re trying to provide a platform for them to collaborate.”

Arthur talked to growers and those partners during his presentation at InfoAg about how John Deere precision ag solution can support the grower’s team. Listen to that presentation and Chuck’s interview with him below.

Interview with Lane Arthur, John Deere ISG InfoAg presentation, John Deere ISG

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Fall is For Weed Control

Lizzy Schultz August 3, 2016

The growing season is in full swing, and the team at FMC Corporation is encouraging growers to be extra weed-conscious as summer comes to an end and harvest season begins. Ken Smith, Technical Service Manager for FMC Corporation, was on hand during the 2016 Ag Media Summit to discuss the reality of herbicide resistance, and how it has made fall weed management more critical than ever.

“We are in late season, and it’s a time where its easy to let your guard down, but it’s also a time when we really need to be conscious of what weeds are out there going to seed, particularly the amaranth species like palmer amaranth and water hemp are such prolific seed producers and it’s a numbers game, so managing these in the fall is very critical for next year,” said Smith in an interview during the Ag Media Summit.

Smith emphasized that while a multitude of weed management practices exist, many are time consuming and expensive, and the use of a long residual herbicide such as FMC’s Anthem line of herbicides is highly praised as the most affordable, effective, and efficient solution for growers.

“When we talk to farmers, we always say that if you start with a clean field, your field stays clean, and one of the ways to start clean is to start thinking about it right now,” said Smith.

Listen to Chuck’s full interview with Ken here:
Interview with Ken Smith, FMC

View and download photos from the event here: 2016 AMS Photo Album

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