Every day, every year farmers work hard to prepare the soil, sow the seed, tend and harvest the crop. These traditions have been around for 100s of years that are now a basic chore that lead to a successful year for our farmers. But with the advancements in technology today, staying up -to-date with these advancements can separate the average producer from the high-yielding producer.
Today it is very important to have a strong data integrity...meaning having a solid source of quality information that you will collect and store to use in future years to produce the best crop you can.
In the past years those that have taken the plunge into data management have used a USB thumb stick to retrieve their data from planting and harvest but would often leave their thumb stick in the machine until into the winter months when it may be too late to act on the data. Making this way a thing of the past...
Presently, the technology is advancing into wireless or mobile uploads into a cloud based system. This allows the data to be current and as close to real time in the field as possible when collecting planting and harvest data. John Deere's Operation Center is an online web-base data store application. Operation Center allows producers to upload their planting and harvest data via USB thumb stick or through cloud based systems such as Mobile Data Transfer or Wireless Data Transfer. Once their data is uploaded they are able to create variety, seeding rates, application, yield, and moisture maps along with many other feature maps. This web based application also allows for a place to store and keep track of all your equipment along with many other features that is beneficial to producers operations such as providing limited access to a trusted partners such as your seed dealer by allowing them access to the fields where their product is applied.
When listing and creating fields, equipment, and crop products it is important to stay consistent across the board meaning if one person enters the field name as East 80 and the actually name is Bob's East 80 it may be difficult to match these fields up from season to season and year to year. When the fields name do not match up this can cause valuable data to get lost causing any recommendations to be altered and not the best quality as it could be.
For those of your that have not dealt with technology in the past, this may not be as easy for you at first, but by talking with your local technology solutions team and following their steps along with my helpful tips it will be possible to boost the data integrity on your farm and have confidence in the information that you have collected and stored.
If you are interested in more information regarding your farm data management please reach out to the Integrated Solutions team here at Horizon Equipment for more information and stay tuned to the next parts of Farm Data Management series over the next few weeks!
I am thankful today for the industry I am apart of and the opportunities I can provide for future farming.
I hope everyone has a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!
