Farmers and experts discuss how John Deere technology and data collection improve farm operations. They share practical examples of precision agriculture tools that help with decision-making and efficiency on the field.
Agriculture has two major things that they cannot control. We can't control the weather because we can never change that. And we also can't control the commodity market. But I do have a lot of control over my operation. So let's focus and make sure that my operation is running efficiently. And if I really get this down, I can kind of tip the scales. So let's try to use technology and data to improve the operation, to improve my management practices, to improve my business decisions. Finding those pieces that we can start saving money. So let's focus on the things that we can control. So we're in St. George, Utah, getting everything ready for our Precision Summit.
This is the biggest this event has ever been. We started it six years ago, and every year it's just gotten a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger.
We started it out and there was probably maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 people. And last year we had over 200 people.
You know, every year there's something new.
Coming out, and then this is where you really get to pinpoint the customers and see what they're excited about.
New spraying stuff, mixing stuff, showing the new. The new generation of displays.
We're finished with last year. We're really starting to get ramped up for planning for next year and learning from other customers what they were doing. Now we can kind of take, okay, I want to try to do that this year. And so having them all here in this place really helps them just see what's available to them.
You know, just knowing that all these guys in here fighting the same battle that we're fighting and all of us are kind of working together, and then we have stoats as a support system to also, you know, help us and push us in the right direction. It really is something special that I look forward to every year.
Good morning, everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started here. Thank you. Thank you for spending your time and energy and efforts to come here today. I'm excited to see what we can learn and have this opportunity to spend some time together again.
So I really enjoy the summit because it gets an opportunity for our customers, the farmers, to be able to network with each other. Some of them know each other from their local areas, but to give them the chance to see what other farmers are doing outside of their valley, outside of their state, how they're utilizing the technology. And most of our summit is actually presented by our customers.
Not so much me and my guys just saying, hey, this is how it should be done. This is really trying to get the farmers to interact with each other so that they can learn from one another instead of just us preaching.
What I really like is when they open up about their data and show us their yields maps, their operations center again this year.
Here's the maps. So the. The one to the left is the average of the seasons 21 and 22. And then this is a map of 23, the one to the right. And a couple things I want to point out that I. That I like is the. The consistency. Yield is great. Yield is fun to talk about, but consistency of nutrients and especially starch for corn silage is important for us. The one to the right to me, looks a lot better. And consistency.
I thought it was really cool to listen to Kurt talk about, like, you know, his whole plan, like, going into this season was, I want to see if population decrease will change my starch. Well, we didn't learn that, but what we did learn is we can save a lot of money by dropping the seed population. So I want to see how low a population I can go and still get same yield. One question before we go back on that. I think this is kind of interesting because you said you really wanted to measure and find and hope that the starch was what was actually going to improve.
Yeah.
But you found out you can reduce the seed population.
Yeah. Yeah.
Fertilizer. And still get the same result.
Yeah. I was hoping that's not what you expected. No, not at all.
Still learn something. I think it's pretty cool.
Yeah. I didn't have any data to really solidify. Like, was that a good move or not? So that's why these plot sections actually give me answers. Once again, not the answers I was really expecting, but am I putting too much investment in seed and fertilizer? Maybe 26 bucks an acre over our 1500 acres of corn. That's a lot of. That's a lot of money.
So what's your comfort level for next year?
I'll probably go a couple thousand more lower just to see. We'll probably have a plot area where we can go, like, probably start off at 30, do a 32, 34, and see where they go. Yeah.
With Kurt in particular, I think we had some great successes. Like, I feel like that he learned a lot this year, and I think it changed his comfort level on what he's willing to try for next year. So he's really learned the value of actually documenting and collecting that data so that then you can analyze it because there's a ton of value on the back end. Once we collect all that data.
All right, so this is. I was up in Coeur d' Alene, actually just a few days ago last week at a soilcraft conference. And Guy had this on a slide and I wrote it down real quick. Cause I said, man, that's exactly what Precision Ag John Deere is doing for us, is if I can't measure it, what's the point? Right? So you can't manage what you don't measure. And that's my main job, is to make good management decisions.
It really is awesome to hear other people's views. And I mean, I'm just learning more all the time.
It makes it exciting. It honestly makes farming, like, fun. Like, I. I've always loved farming, I grew up farming and I've always just loved it to death. That's what passion looks like in your work. Yeah, right. Yeah, so that's exactly. You actually love what you're doing because you're doing it not even at work, but you're. You think about a lot. And I. That' that's what actually makes farming fun, you know, and it's like, you look forward to the next year. Like, what are we going to do? And this is huge. Like, this year has been by far the best year of like, good, clean, usable data. Now it's like the next year I'm excited to say, hey, let's go to the next step and let's get more answers, right? This is just one extra assistant, dude. Just make my life and everyone's life on Hegler Creek a little easier.
So last thing is, I want to thank the Stos Precision team for putting this all together. I appreciate all of you guys as customers coming and sharing your wealth of knowledge. So thank you. Thank you, Precision Team.
So Precision Ag is a must have.
It's super exciting to see how fast it's come and how fast it's going. It makes my life easier, saves me a lot of time.
They've really helped us hone in on our efficiencies and make this as efficient of a farm as we can get to.
Once you start to see the amount of productivity gains and the efficiencies that you can gain and being able to have all that data for future use, it's really, to me, is extremely valuable.
I think this is going to be the future. And so I'm trying to just stay on top of that.
