One area I credit for taking our farm to the next level is improved planter technology. I think we’ve probably gained 20-25 bushels per acre of corn yield throughout the years. 

Full disclosure, I’m a Precision Planting dealer and had a front-row seat to watch the technology develop from the very beginning. I’m also a farmer, though. My first brush with the technology was in the break room of the local Pioneer dealership where Gregg Sauder put on a demonstration of the seed meter he was developing.

I had a real, "Ahamoment when I watched a seed meter practically grind seed when it wasn’t set for the right seed size or shape. In the years since I’ve tried pretty much all the technology.

Planter Tech Boosts. I run a 24-row John Deere 1770NT totally converted with Precision Planting technology. The high-speed planter unit has helped me get more acres planted in a day without sacrificing planting quality. 

I helped test the unit and it was amazing. They found you could plant corn accurately at 13 mph. No, nobody is going to do that because of the tremendous horsepower it would take — and if you hit a rock, you’re really going to destroy something — but it was impressive. 

In practice, it took my planting speed from 4.5-5 mph up to 7.5-8 mph, even 9 mph if warranted. That means I get 25% to 30% more work out of my planter in the same time, which is a huge difference.

The two-stage FurrowForce closing system has also been impressive. It has inverted blades that crumble the soil over the seed, then a packer wheel firms the soil. It’s controlled by an airbag that continuously adapts force. 

A neighbor of mine put FurrowForce on one of his two planters and used them both in the same field. When the crop started to emerge, there was uniform emergence where he used the FurrowForce and the corn planted by the other planter was only just barely starting to come on. 

This was a very pronounced demonstration. The old rule of thumb from the universities is if you can get your entire crop to emerge in a 6-12-hour window you’ll pick up around 6 bushels of yield. 

Another interesting case was with my DownForce system. I like that it has hydraulic force that moves the cylinder not only down, but back up. I used a backhoe to remove a rock from one of my fields. When we planted the next spring, I could map those tracks by where my DownForce applied and released pressure within a fraction of a second to accommodate the changing soil density. 

Banding Fertilizer. My planter runs heavy because we do a fair amount of banding. I use Precision Planting Conceal units to dual band N 2 inches off both sides of the row right where the crown roots will end up and 2 inches below. I apply 8 total gallons of fertilizer — 5 gallons of 28% UAN mixed with and 3-3.5 gallons of ammonium thiosulfate (ATS). Each side of the row gets 4 gallons of the aggregate. 

I also stream a low-salt starter fertilizer in the row for a good start using FurrowJet. It has three nozzles to apply product directly in the furrow behind the disc openers and ¾-inch off either side of the furrow. We’re using this system to test biological products. So far, the jury is still out. 

Helping Hand from Data. While I can suffer from tech overload sometimes, I do still seek out innovative tools to use on the farm. One new tool I’m exploring is using Ag MRI to get satellite and aerial data for crop management.

It’s been enlightening. I’ve always been very religious about taking soil temperatures ahead of planting. Soybeans can be seeded in early April here. The problem was, I was taking soil temperatures in one spot that weren’t representative of the whole field.

The data from this service showed the soil temperature in my black ground was very different from the soil temperature on the lighter clay knolls. If I plant too early and half my soils aren’t ready, that can really affect how evenly my crop emerges. Now I have access to data that gives me a more complete picture.

The service can deliver a lot more, but I’m just dabbling for now. I’m interested in the ability to track diseases like tar spot and forecast yields. They use different camera lenses to gather layers of data. It spotted where wind had caused some green snap in the edge of one of my corn fields. I was able to see there was an issue and go out and see what was wrong.

It will be interesting to see where these technologies and others will take us in the future.