Jake Rianda says customers are going to go where they can get their data, and whether it’s yield data or in-season agronomic data, he believes farmers will eventually gravitate toward dealers who can provide the information that can show them how efficient or inefficient their operation is.

“This year we decided to go full force with the planter inspections because of all the failures we were seeing during the growing season,” says Abby Weltzien, service & parts manager of Swiderski’s precision farming department in Mosinee. “We wanted to drive home the importance of it to the customers and help educate them on the issues they could run into if they don’t fix certain problems with their planter.”

Steve Martin grew up on his dad Howard’s farm raising tobacco, corn, wheat and soybeans. After trying no-till farming in the early 1970s, Howard Martin wasn’t satisfied with the results he was seeing. Roughly a decade later, he decided to give it another try.