Ag Leader Technology Blog

How time flies when you’re having fun! Since my last post back in August I have been to several countries meeting various existing distributors and also potential new ones. I even made it to the Farm Progress Show in Illinois earlier this year, which I believe is one of the largest farm machinery shows in [...]

It seems only yesterday that I wrote my last blog on the Cereals event, but according to my calendar it has been over 2 months. Time flies when you are having fun!
Shortly after the Cereals show, I attended the Boregby field days in Sweden to visit our distributor Datalogisk. This is a very similar show [...]

Cereals is an annual event that covers more than 64ha (~160ac) and has more than 450 suppliers present covering all aspects of arable production from seeds and fertilisers to recycling and renewable energy resources, and of course precision farming technologies. There are also machinery manufacturers and extensive trial plots of many seed varieties and agrochemicals.

It is inevitable that Ag Leader’s products are going to be used in unusual situations around the globe. During our recent training for International Distributors, I got to hear of one such situation from Mac Nel, who currently works for our South African distributor. Mac has been involved in the use of a DirectCommand system on locomotives to apply herbicides. Below is his description of the problem, the solution and the challenges.

The weather has started to warm up and dry up over here in Europe and that can only mean one thing – time to go to the field! This is the time of year when spring crops are sown, vegetables planted and nitrogen applied to the winter crops, and it is the nitrogen application I [...]

Earlier this month, 34 distributors from 18 countries attended the Ag Leader International Distributor training event held in Merida, Spain. This is the second time we have held training for our overseas distributors outside the US. The first was held in the UK two years ago. The week included a mixture of classroom based technical [...]

It is not normal (from a weather perspective at least) that I wish I was in Iowa! However, given the recent weather and temperatures here in the UK, Iowa has proven to be worthy of consideration as a destination to warm up a little! With temperatures down to -13°C (9°F) (according to my car at [...]

One of my recent trips took me to Poland to meet our distributor Kamil Szymanczak, who owns the company KAM-ROL (www.kamrol.pl), located near Warsaw. I spent very little time in the city but instead headed southeast to the Lublin region. On the way through here, we met with another dealer, Henry Pawelec, who also sells [...]

As you may have heard, Russia suffered a very poor wheat harvest this year due to prolonged droughts in most of its agricultural areas. Eleven of the drought stricken areas saw more than half their sown land destroyed and it affected more than 9million Ha (22m ac) of land overall.  There were also the images [...]

It has been a while since my last post but I can assure you, it has been a busy few weeks. Harvest in terms of small grains is completed in the southern and central parts of Europe. In the northern part it is mostly the wheat that is left. It seemed that to start with [...]

At the time of writing this it has been nigh on 2 months since I have seen a spot of rain, though admittedly 4 weeks of that I spent in Africa. As you can imagine, this is starting to have an impact on some crops over here in the UK they are starting to show [...]

As I write this I am at the end of my second week in South Africa. During my second week here, I have been travelling around meeting some farmers.  We’ve been discussing their thoughts on precision farming and why they have adopted it. Coincidentally, I was also present during the installation of the first ParaDyme™ [...]

As I write this post, I am enjoying the warm sunshine in the Freestate, South Africa. It is currently winter down here but even so, temperatures rise to 25° C (77° F) during the day. However it does drop to zero (32° F) overnight. My reason for being here is to visit our South African distributor CLM Precision [...]

p>Well, spring has finally sprung over here!  It seems to have been a long time coming because of an extended winter, but there is no doubt it is here now.  Even as I write this it is 17°C (62°F) which is positively warm for the UK!
Along with the warmer and drier weather comes an increase [...]

Some people would say I have a dream job – traveling a large part of the world and meeting a lot of new people, all at the expense of the company.  And they’d be right!  But of course its not without its challenges, both in terms of logistics whilst traveling and developing products for these [...]

Croatia – not a country that immediately comes to mind when talking about precision farming.  However, in this country of 4.5 million people there is one company that is now adopting this new technology.  Agrokor Group is the largest farming company in Croatia and farms approximately 40,000 ha with a variety of crops from wheat [...]