Ag Equipment Intelligence Contributor Dan Crummett recently caught up with AGCO application product specialist Joe Dimler for a deep dive into the significance of the company’s smart spraying collaboration with Bosch BASF. Dimler said the company has a roadmap to expand the technology’s data collection abilities a few years down the line to include plant health, population stands, fungus detection and pest detection.
“We really believe it’s going to change the way that guys farm. When you think of — If you talk to growers today, they’ll tell you they learn more about their crop on that first pass of the sprayer. When the corn’s V4, V5, they’re looking for what kind of stand is out there, what is the uniformity out there, how healthy is the crop.“And they do a great job, but they’re also trying to drive a sprayer 15 miles an hour down a field and watch a boom and watch pressures, and they have a lot going on in the cab. This system will be designed to really collect a lot of those things that they’re looking for, but it’ll put. — It’ll add in a way that there’s a summary that really gives you the ability to make changes. For instance, if you start to see some early fungus set in, that is something to plan for on your next herbicide pass, whether you decide to add a fungicide early on and take a little bit more of a precautionary measure or whether it’s something you need to simply scout throughout the year.
“But either way, we feel like that first sprayer pass, that first post emerge pass is the most critical pass on the farm, and we aim to collect as much data as we can on that pass.”
Hear more of Crummett’s discussion with Joe Dimler in the latest edition of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast.