Two farmers explain how the Harvest Lab 3000 sensor measures moisture, protein, starch, and oil in grain during harvest. Real-time data lets you optimize cultivation, marketing, and nutrient management on the fly.
Many of you will no doubt be familiar with our near infrared sensor, the Harvest Lab 3000. I can use it on the forage harvester to measure the forage ingredients on the slurry tanker for precise application of organic fertilizer and in the cowshed to improve my feeding. Now we've added a fourth application on the combine. We call it grain sensing. Dennis, you're the expert for grain sensing. How does the system work?
I've opened the sensor here. It's installed on the grain elevator of the combine and documents the values every second with our harvest. For cannabis lab sensor, we measure the ingredients of the wheat, moisture content and protein. And for barley, we measure moisture content, protein and starch. And for rapeseed, we measure moisture content, protein and oil. The values flow via the machine display into our John Deere operations center, our cloud based farm management software, where the data is then available to our farmers for further analysis.
This means we first record more measured values which are then available to us for optimization. What exactly are the benefits for the customer then, Dennis?
By using the Harvest Lab 3000 sensor, we enable our customers to improve the cultivation and marketing of their grain. This means we enable the customer to make fact based decisions during harvesting. Where do I sell my grain or where do I store my grain?
Yes, exactly. Because I already know the ingredients of the grain during harvesting, not only when I deliver the grain.
Precisely. Furthermore, we help the farmers with grain cultivation through nutrient and fertilizer management, variety selection and machine settings.
And all this gives us much more data for analysis, not only at the field level, but really for different areas of the field. Because I see not only the yield, but also the protein distribution. And that's where you sometimes get surprises. If you want to learn more, then contact your John Deere dealer.
