What did I plant there?

With our recent non stop supply of rain, I have spent quite a bit of time working with people on their data in SMS, as well as my own data.

For those of you that don't know, SMS stands for Spatial Management System and is the mapping software that is written by Ag Leader Technology.

The biggest misconception of this software package is that it can only be used to read data from Ag Leader monitors. The reality of it is that it can read nearly every file type in the industry. Probably something like 99% of the files available in precision ag can be read by SMS.

Anyhow, SMS is the software package that I am using for data analysis, and that is one of the things that is good to do on a rainy day like today.

In the data logged by our planters, I can see exactly where each hybrid was planted, the date it was planted, how many acres there are, when I started, and when I stopped. Most of you probably knew this.

Because we are running the population monitoring on our planters, I can also see the population of each field in this logged data. Now the question is what does it do for me?

The obvious things are being able to overlay yield data and see yield by hybrid, but since we also know the population, we can now take that into account. We also logged the speed of the planter, so we can compare yield by planting speed. That gets pretty interesting for guys that like to get in a hurry with their planters.

The bottom line is, there is endless opportunities to analyze the data that is logged, and it can provide insight to your farming operation when you do. Feel free to post questions you may have about ways to analyze data.

Technology Buzz

I just finished thumbing through the lastest issue of Successful Farming, and I was somewhat shocked at the number of articles this month about technology. Two different stories featured farmers talking about how technology has made an impact in their operations, (both of which are customers of HTS) as well as an article about the ISO standards, another quoting university of Purdue research about auto steer systems, etc. The list goes on and on.

It seems to me that technology is here to stay, and the ones running efficiently are utilizing technology everywhere they can. My job in this mix is to try and help people understand the technology they are investing in. There is nothing worse for me then talking to a customer that spent thousands of dollars on technology with someone else, only to find out it doesn't do what they thought it would, and they can't even upgrade it to something that will.

I'm not saying I have all the answers, or a crystal ball to see the future, but being focused on only precision ag it definitely helps me to keep people from making costly mistakes in technology purchases. Feel free to post comments to this post with questions you may have about technology. If I don't know the answer, I'll do my best to find someone that does!