Family Farm Influence Leads To SmartPath™

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.

When I was initially introduced to guidance systems I was disappointed; guidance as it had been developed would only work on 50% of the fields I’d grown up in.  What we really needed for our farm was a pattern where I could simply drive and get guidance.  I also had the occasional need to use a straight AB pattern, which I needed to use at the same time I was using my curve patterns. SmartPath gave us a pattern that made it easy to toggle between patterns and easily get the guidance needed for irregular shaped fields.

Since the introduction of SmartPath, many growers have provided more feedback on how it has benefitted their operation. Sam Creed, a grower in Northwest Missouri, shared some of the benefits of SmartPath on his operation. “In my fields, I used to have to reset my steering every time I got to a terrace; with SmartPath, I can just keep going. There are more hours in the day because you’re not as tired, and it just works wonderful on the bottom ground as well.”

When it comes to guidance solutions, the main purpose is to make you more efficient, reduce fatigue, and generally make things easier on the operator. We hope that SmartPath has done just that for your operation. We are always striving to help you in your unique operation, and we welcome any and all feedback. For more information about guidance patterns, read this Lessons in Precision Ag blog post.