Taylor, Jared, and Matt discuss how John Deere technology helps them manage cotton planting. They tackle data organization, monitor planting rates in real time, and show how the right equipment cuts inefficiency on the farm.
How am I feeling? I'm feeling a little tired, a little stressed. But everything, everything's going well.
There's always that, you know, a little bit of a stress level. I think for all, you know, any grower.
I think what changes mostly is attitude, the long hours, and everybody's on the edge a little more. Just push, push, push.
All hands on deck. All things considered, we're going really Good.
Perfect time.
May 10th, and we're in the prime time of cotton planting.
Soil temperature is perfect. We have wonderful moisture. It's going to really germinate quickly and come up fast. Everything's set up for a good start.
So over the winter, Taylor and Jared, they both had a big challenge.
Somebody a John Deere, basically, my brother and I had to go in on the computer and clean up six to eight years worth of just unorganized information.
We would have to merge a bunch of fields together and some of them would have AB lines, some of them wouldn't.
It was just unorganized compared to what it could have been. Went in and added seed varieties that we were going to use this year.
Through getting everything in line to be able to make this data management project possible.
Trying to make sure we got everything.
The way dad wanted it too.
It's much smoother, cleaner now and much, much easier to operate.
It is a big task, you know, to take on and get everything where it needs to be. But now that they've got it, they can see what it can do. So they're really gung ho on it.
Yeah, it pays to be organized.
I'm not going to say we've mastered it, but we're very much advanced to what we were a year ago. 7 to 10,000 less on his monitor than right after lunch. Matt, who works with us very closely from John Deere, was looking at our mapping from that morning.
I got on my operations app. Just. I was wanting to see, you know, just kind of look, I'm always curious. So I got on there and I saw a couple potential issues.
There was an incident that stood out that is very obvious from the color on the map, that one planter was noticeably different in population.
My tractor was showing a target rate fairly close to my target population. And when we looked on the my John Deere app, it was showing that two of our tractors were running basically the exact same and my tractor wasn't putting out nearly as much seed.
We changed the plate number.
We found out that the actual disk number was not entered and that threw the rate off.
It could have been a lot worse. If we hadn't been able to catch it on the app.
Is that true? You know, that variable rate?
So that was something. We might have caught it before the season was over, but we might not have either.
It's scary. And, you know, if we had been over 1000 acres and half my target population, you know, it just could have been bad.
So it was pretty valuable. I feel like.
They were able to see what it can do and see, you know, potential money saved at the end of the day. And it just takes that one time for a grower to be able to see. Okay. This really is, you know, the real deal.
Yesterday was just a prime example of, you know, something that could save you.
Money, that gives me confidence and. And what we're doing and how we.
Can use just takes one small fluke, you know, throughout the year, that if it lasted the whole planting season, it's going to show up in your yield. You want to be able to catch that, fix it, and continue to go.
I'm really excited about when we do go to harvest. I didn't know my phone was that smart. I think that's when it'll hit us that we're on the right track.
