Dan and Tim Kilmer prepare their north central Illinois farm for planting season with precision agriculture technology and software updates. They walk through John Deere equipment setup and discuss how new tools help them plant more efficiently.
Sam.
My name is Dan Kilmer. I'm a farmer in north central Illinois. It's the start of a whole new year. There's a lot of uncertainty as to what could happen throughout the year, but if you're not excited about planting season, you're in the wrong business.
My name is Tim Kilmer and I'm a farmer. I'm in North Central Illinois. I'm looking forward to the upcoming planting season. It looks like hopefully we're going to have a nice window to put the crop in and I'm excited to get it out and get the year started.
Justin Blanchette, Precision Ag Business Manager with ahw. We've got preparations well underway to ensure that we have a successful planting season. Doing software updates to all the equipment, ensuring that when they get to the field and go time is here, they're ready to go.
As every year, my goal is to grow the biggest crop I can and planting season is the start of that. From the moment that seed touches the ground, you're setting the stage for the whole year. And with this technology you can really do that.
Keep an eye on that data received.
There at the bottom.
Thank you so much.
My name is Jake Leek. I'm a Precision Ag solutions specialist with HW. I'm out here at Kilmore Farmer site updating the 26, 30 and 6000 in preparation for planting.
AHW offers preseason optimization services where we come out, do software updates to the AMS equipment. There we go. That feels full of curves as well as the technology being incorporated into the vehicles themselves.
The row command is what's going to turn individual sections off on the planter when it comes into coverage or waterway. And then there's also documentation which is recording how the overall field is performing. So, so you put all that together and that's the most powerful decision maker.
Without a doubt. The benefit of the technology is efficiency gains, minimizing your inputs and maximizing the siege potential, doing everything to the best of your abilities.
Jake and Justin at AHW have taught me how to make my own guidance lines. I mount the 26, 30 and the globe onto a gauge, go out in the fields and create straight track lines and ab curve lines to simulate the planter and the tractor exactly how they would drive in the field. When you come back with the planter and actually plant the field, that it will be exactly as you made it.
The Kilmers have taken what they learned from last year, ensuring that the first time that I hit the resume switch, everything hits on all cylinders.
Several years ago, before we had any of this technology. It was very tedious to plant along boundaries, along telephone poles, along fences. I take a lot of pride in having nice, straight, square fields, and this technology really helps with that.
We'll get the seed placement where we want it to, we'll get the rows right where we need them, and we'll just utilize everything on this farm to maximum potential.
All our attitude has changed. Everyone was hesitant at the beginning of this adoption of the tech, but once you kind of get your toes dipped in the water, you learn things you never jumped you could do with it.
Well, for 2017, we added row command and section control on the second planter. This year, we loved it so much that we decided both planters really needed that. And this is really the best time of year to use the Planter plus app. It kind of is a refresher course on all aspects of the planter and tractor. Hooking up hydraulics, changing populations to get ready for planning.
It's been very interesting watching the adoption of technology take place. A lot of uncertainty, I'll say, to begin with, but it doesn't take long for that to wear off and create the appetite for more and more of it.
You know, there's a learning curve involved with this technology, but once you get the basic understanding, it's really simple.
Yeah, I'm excited about this year's planting season. Technology in 2017 is going to allow the Kilmers to be more efficient than they have been in the past and keep tabs on everything that's going into making the farm successful.
