Orchestrating the fieldwork of a large equipment fleet across 20,000 acres is a challenge, says Travis Senter, a third-generation farmer in northeast Arkansas. But thanks to technology, it’s becoming more efficient.
“I remember riding around with my father when I was younger,” recalls Senter who, along with his father, raises cotton, rice, soybeans, and corn. “We had to go, ‘Drive over there and check this guy,’ and ‘Drive over here and check on someone else.’ ”
Senter is a technology early adopter, streamlining his operations, increasing efficiency and productivity, and improving field processes. “Now I can see exactly what operators see, and convey any changes,” he says. “I don’t have to physically get on the machine and set it myself. I can walk them through it from wherever I am. I feel like I can be in more than one place at a time.”
Logistics and planning
Efficient operations are critical to minimizing field losses and getting crops out before bad weather arrives. “Logistically, harvest is sometimes a nightmare,” Senter says. But, he adds, the John Deere Operations Center has helped untangle that web and make harvesting as efficient as possible.
For instance, the software forecasts when a field’s harvest is complete, so Senter can manage grain trucks. “There’s a stage when you have 14 semi trucks, and one little road getting there,” Senter describes. “We don’t need 10 trucks piling in there, just waiting for nothing.”
Many operations go on concurrently during harvest, says Kendal Quandahl, precision segment lead for Case IH in North America. “There are combines operating, cart operators, and truck drivers,” she says. “There may be fall fertilizer applications and fall tillage, sometimes fall seeding. A farmer can really only be involved in one of those things effectively at any given time.” The company’s FieldOps platform can show bottlenecking, so farmers can make logistics changes to be more efficient.
Ashley and Dan Risseeuw, from Fairmont, in eastern Nebraska, needed a more efficient way to keep track of grain tickets from common delivery destinations such as co-ops and ethanol plants. They built an app called 4Harvest, which grabs information from a smartphone photo of a scale ticket, such as moisture, bushels, and weight, and saves it. You can then run a year-end report that shows every delivery, its originating field, the driver and truck used, and other information.
During and after harvest, 4Harvest also can track grain contract updates in real time, Ashley says. “As [farmers] make deliveries against each contract, they can see a live update of the contract to know when it is complete,” she says.
Remote monitoring and equipment management
During prime harvest conditions, nothing frustrates more than a machine going down. Senter has found value in John Deere Operations Center’s Expert Alerts, which connect his fleet to his dealer. “With a large fleet, sometimes the alerts can be like the boy that cried wolf,” he says. “It’s hard to weed out the ones that are important.”
When the software alerted Senter’s dealer to an issue on one of the grower’s machines, a technician arrived in the field to repair it. “They knew it was a big problem before I knew it was a problem, so the dealer just sent a guy out here to fix it,” Senter says. “They fixed it quickly, and I was not down for 24 hours.”
Case IH’s FieldOps can help reduce down time as well, Quandahl says. “That information will all come through on the app, and it’ll very clearly identify through some icons if you have a machine you need to investigate,” she says. Local Case IH dealerships have access to that information and can help monitor your equipment. “So having FieldOps enabled across your operation is going to increase that cohesiveness with your local dealership, increase that partnership, and be able to make those unfortunate situations be a little less painful,” she concludes.
Data analysis and insights
John Deere Operations Center’s Field Analyzer notes in-depth machine performance data at field level, including harvest speed, acres per hour, fuel consumption, machine throughput, and bushels per hour. “We want to make sure that customers who buy our equipment are getting a return on that equipment, that it’s doing what they expected it to do over all their acres,” says Ryan Stien, the company’s go-to-market manager.
The platform’s Work Analyzer tool offers a holistic view of machinery across all fields. “If I wanted to understand how this combine performed in corn, Work Analyzer allows for comparison of work totals and also performance,” Stien says. “How many bushels per hour can a com-bine ingest? How much fuel did the combine use, from a cost standpoint? It gives you that kind of scorecard for your equipment during the harvest step.”
Senter uses the machine data to communicate with employees on their performance and ultimately increase their efficiency. “When your employees know that they’re doing exactly what you want them to do, they do a better job,” he says. “I know what’s going on, and they feel more connected to what they’re doing.”
Senter has found his niche on the farm through technology. “Give the younger generation an opportunity to try some things and see if it’s a benefit,” he suggests. “It never hurts to try things.”