Ag Leader Technology Blog

It’s that time of year again; Ag Leader just finished our annual dealer event, and you are likely  getting equipment stored away for the winter season. In the last post on Precision Point, the tech support team shared some tips on properly storing your precision ag equipment. I also wanted to remind you of a [...]

For many years, agronomists from universities and consulting agencies have been pushing for more conservation tillage, such as strip-till.  The concept of fewer passes through the field in a crop season has some farmers seeing the benefit of lower labor and fuel cost.  Another advantage to strip-till is that it allows the farmer to manage [...]

Growing up in western Iowa, where all I knew was farming on the contour and around terraces (some of which have ten foot backs to them), it’s easy to understand why I was excited to introduce the SmartPath guidance pattern a year ago. While my home farm had an occasional field established along the river bottom, those usually ended up running up the hill after a short distance. SmartPath was developed based on my own real-life experience – and the real-life experience of two of our testers – gained while growing up disking, planting and spraying in south central and western Iowa fields, as well as customer feedback we received from Missouri to Australia.

Last year, Ag Leader restructured our technical support department to include a new service team focused specifically on GPS, guidance and steering support – the Machine Guidance Support Team. This was done in an effort to more effectively handle some of the complex and specific questions you may have regarding your guidance equipment. While all of our technical support staff is still extensively trained and knowledgable in the complete Ag Leader product line, our Machine Guidance Support group is meant to streamline calls in this area. Along with myself, our support team currently includes Jordan Ditmer, LeRoy Dickey and Seth Schrader.

Once your display is updated and ready to go to the field, check that the precision equipment on the planter is working correctly as well.  First, make sure you can load your planter configuration. If the display detects out of date CAN module firmware, it will prompt the user to update these modules. All you [...]

The latest firmware updates for the INTEGRA and EDGE displays were released today, offering several enhancements and new features for customers. With these new features, the displays offer even greater functionality for your operation, and the firmware enhancements address many common requests.
The INTEGRA display will gain several new features with this update, including compatibility with [...]

In precision ag, we are continuously discussing the importance of analyzing data in order to make management decisions regarding your operation. One of the key pieces of data in an operation is yield maps. Yield monitoring and yield mapping have been around for many years (in fact, Al Myers developed the first practical and applicable on-the-go [...]

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 [...]

p>Sitting at Ag Leader Academy during our annual dealer event, I have had plenty of exposure to the brisk breeze blowing across Iowa this week.  It is a great reminder of the fact that the season is probably winding down for most of us, and the machinery is being stored in the shed for the [...]

Now that the crops are out of the field and fall field work is beginning, it is time for those fortunate enough to have a problem with excess moisture to get in the field and start repairing and laying new tile.  For those of you who have tiled fields in the past, you can likely [...]

OmniSTAR
OmniSTAR is a wide-area differential GPS service, using a network of base stations surveyed to centimeter accuracy.

OmniSTAR offers wide-area differential correction by using geo-stationary satellites to broadcast correction data over a large area. OmniSTAR differential correction is subscription-based, which allows you to pay for the level of accuracy you need. Currently, three levels [...]

Earlier this week we started discussing differential correction as it applies to your precision farming practices. There are several options for differential correction services, and the service you use should be based on your precision farming operation. To help determine which differential correction service you should use, we will describe some of the most common [...]

As we discussed in last week’s lessons about GNSS, a very high level of navigational accuracy is necessary to utilize precision ag technologies. Because GNSS alone does not provide positioning signals that are accurate enough for precision farming, differential correction is used to allow for better accuracy.
Differential correction is a technique to improve the accuracy [...]

As we discussed earlier this week, the acronym “GNSS” encompasses all satellite navigation networks currently available and in development. The most advanced GNSS networks are GPS and GLONASS.

GPS (Global Positioning System) is the United States’ constellation of 24 satellites, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. Traditionally, GPS has been the most commonly used [...]

It’s hard to believe that July is almost here and fall harvest is not all that far away.  It won’t be long and the kids will be back in school and we will all be wondering the same thing – where did this summer go?  As I drive by corn and soybean fields on my [...]

GNSS – Global Navigation Satellite Systems – is an acronym that you may not commonly hear in the precision ag discussion. However, this is the general term for satellite navigation systems that you likely hear quite often, such as GPS or GLONASS.
GPS and GLONASS are both satellite navigation systems specific to the country or region [...]

This past weekend as I drove home from one of my niece’s graduation ceremony in northern Iowa I was passing the time by thinking about quickly things change.  It seems like it was just last week that her mother, dad and I took her to her first 4th of July parade. I’ll never forget that [...]

If you are a farmer in North America there is no doubt you wear a lot of different hats during the day. I am not referring to a Pioneer or Dekalb hat, but the hat of grain marketer, accountant, agronomist, machine operator, etc.  You are heavily involved in all aspects of your operation.  This is [...]

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 [...]

I successfully made it back from Italy after the delay due to the volcano eruption in Iceland, a mess I hope I don’t have to deal with again.  With that behind me it is time to move on to Costa Rica where our new distributor Agricultura Cientifica is introducing Ag Leader products into the region.
Agricultura [...]