Heath Husengay, a fourth-generation farmer from Casey, Illinois, explains how John Deere's AutoPath technology has improved his precision and productivity by reducing guesswork in his farming practices.
My name is Heath Husengay here in Casey, Illinois. I'm a fourth generation family farmer, corn and soybeans and currently operate around 8,500 acres. Before Autopath, it was more traditional, I would say, in the way that we farmed. You know, we used a lot of pre plant anhydrous and some pre plant urea. And that was, that was really the only option we had. We were all skeptical, optimistically skeptical about Autopath. I said, there is no way that we're gonna be leading this thing with a 25 knife liquid bar that's used to side dress. And you know, some of the deer guys came down, they said, well, we'll prove you wrong. I was like, oh, yeah, okay, we'll see about that. And they did. You know, that was the ceiling deal for me. Whereas if that thing can go on an ab curve and put the planter where it needs to and essentially drive the tractor to compensate for the turn of the planter, Splitting a bulk row on a 25 knife liquid bar with a 24 row planter, that was like, okay, this is the real deal. If it can do all that, it's gonna do everything I need it to do. So with autopath takes the guesswork out of it. You know, whenever you pull it up on your screen, you can see every guidance line. You can see your guidance lines for your headlands, your guidance line for your throughs. Everything's there so that there's no guesswork on which of these guidance lines do I need to use? And you don't have to grab onto one and do a dry run and be like, oh, wow, good thing I didn't use that one. That one was off. You just point your tractor at whichever one you want to grab it highlights it on the screen. You engage your autotrack and off you go. I feel like when it comes to looking forward five years and all the pieces that Deere has with the automation tools, it seems like they have really all the, all the puzzle pieces right now and they're just going to connect them together in my mind. The autopath, the autonomy, the turn automation, that seems to me like true autonomy in itself. And I think that it's going to be really exciting in the next five years to see just how much of an impact that has in AG because let's face it, that's going to be a game changer for a lot of people in their productivity of what they can get done. They can cover more with the same amount of help. And they're doing it in a very precise way. There's not going to be operator error in it. It's really rewarding too. I feel like farming is truly one of the industries where you, you know, you're going to reap what you sow and what you put in, you're going to get out. And the technology helps us put in our best to try to get the best out of it.
