If you’re in the market for a new tractor, especially if hay is part of your operation, you may have heard about Tractor Implement Management (TIM), also known as ISOBUS Class 3.
As we discussed in the last blog post on ISOBUS, Task Controller communicates between the tractor and implement so the implement knows when to make commands, like shutting off sprayer booms or making variable-rate fertilizer applications.
TIM takes that communication and control even further. The next step in ISOBUS technology, TIM allows the implement to control the tractor, which can optimize the vehicle’s performance based on what the implement is sensing. It ensures that the implement and vehicle are in sync throughout the operation.
For instance, in a tillage operation, the implement could sense if the tractor is pulling really hard and tell the tractor to shift down a gear or lift the implement out of the ground a few inches. This could result in fuel savings or reduce wear and tear of the equipment
While the technology for TIM is already here, it’s still under development as the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF) — the organization founded to create guidelines for ISOBUS and ensure cross-manufacturer compatibility of precision farming technology — works to get the definitions in place and standardized.
We’re probably years out from TIM being more mainstream and defined, but there are some manufacturers working on it, and those growing hay can even use some features of TIM today.
What to Expect
The first thing we’ll probably see with TIM is speed control — the implement telling the tractor to speed up or slow down. Lifting and lowering the implement may be another early-on feature. As a protocol for TIM advances, it’s possible we could see the implement being able to control tractor gear shifting or even turning.
Some manufacturers are building their tractors to handle what they think is coming down the pipeline, and while they may not be marketed as TIM, there are some hay tractors already using TIM capabilities.
For instance, Case IH has a tractor series in its hay and forage lineup that allows an approved implement to control tractor ground speed, rear PTO and rear hitch, while a series of New Holland tractors allows the baler to control the tractor’s speed, which the company says optimizes feed rate and helps produce a constant flake thickness.
Ready for TIM
Because it is still under development, the newer your equipment is, the more you’ll likely be able to take advantage of this technology.
It’s not to say that older tractors can’t be used with TIM, especially in regards to steering commands from the implement, as many older vehicles can still take advantage of that. But to be able to fully use TIM, you may need to upgrade to a new tractor once fully developed systems are available.
If you’re currently in the market for a new tractor and you purchase one that has some level of automated steering and is computer-controlled, you’ll probably be able to fully utilize TIM in the future.
But keep in mind that what you’re currently seeing on the market is just the tip of it — there is more to come with TIM, and it’s definitely something to be excited about.
Darin Kohlmeyer may be one of the only college professors around who isn’t constantly hassling his students to put their phones away.
As Program Chair of the Precision Ag Program at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, Koylmeyer is helping students learn about the technology required to be successful in today’s increasingly complex ag industry. And he’s not just helping students — executives running ag companies in the surrounding community are also heralding his efforts.
“It seems like everybody we talk to is glad our college is offering this because there’s such a need to prepare people who are getting into the workforce,” he says. “Students are realizing that Precision Ag is a great program. These kids grew up with technology and working on a computer is a natural fit — they’ve had a phone almost their whole life. They come in and say their dad doesn’t want to mess with this, but they do.”
Kohlmeyer is noticing that even students who don’t have an ag background are being drawn to the program. “They are interested in the technology and want to see how these two worlds can meet.”
Ivy Tech began its Precision Ag Program in 2015 and uses Trimble Ag Software’s educational solutions in its GIS classes, and will be leveraging it for farm data management classes in the future as well. The Teacher Guide and Student Workbook give students a first-hand look at the details of running a business, whether they have a farm background or not. Data used in the lessons are from real life experiences that your students will never forget. The program’s 15 lesson plans include a printable student workbook, precision ag data that is used with the student workbook, and a teacher guide. Each chapter provides students a hands-on learning experience with precision agriculture and farm business management.
Students Benefitting From Hands-On Experience
One of Kohlmeyer’s students who tried out other farm data management software offers said he liked Trimble’s streamlined approach. “I come from an area where there are a lot of older farmers not used to precision technologies, and I think this software is easiest to use and would be easier to explain how it would benefit them,” says Nathan Schneider.
According to Austin Smith, an Ivy Tech student from Missouri, Trimble’s farm data software platform is intuitive and easy to use: Start with your farm and location, add the particular fields, enter the crops in each field, track your activities in that field. “It is very helpful in planning out your fields and having all of your information in one place where you can keep it all together,” said Smith. “If you get proficient enough at it, it is very streamlined.”
In the future, Kohlmeyer believes that his program will need to be renamed. “Ten years from now it won’t be called precision ag — it will just be the normal way you farm.”
For more information on Trimble Ag Software’s educational offering for colleges and university, please visit us today or call (800) 282-4103.
Crop advisors working with farmers who manage their operations with Trimble Ag Software have an interesting story to tell. Many share reports of financial and time savings by farmer clients that are tied directly to their farm management software. We wanted to share some of our favorite precision ag software benefits seen by growers over the past year.
Todd Farver, Iowa Agronomist
Benefit #1 – Yield and Environmental Gains
As a Van Wall Equipment agronomist working with about 15 farmer customers near Ankeny, Iowa, Todd Farver says one of the most rewarding parts of the job is when his farmer customers get a full grasp of the bottom-line impact of making data-driven decisions.
For example, one of Farver’s customers experienced a significant increase in yields on a particular field that had always been problematic. Five years ago it was one of the farm’s lowest-producing fields, yielding about 185-bushel corn on average. Now, it’s reaching 240-bushel corn.
How did this happen? “Before he was flat-rating everything, but now we’re planting 26,000 plants per acre in one zone, and then 37,000 in the better-producing zones,” Farver says. “This is the difference it’s making, and this is why I explain to people that we are putting every seed in the best possible position to be successful.”
Farver gets excited when he recounts his clients’ big wins, and it’s easy to see why. As a passionate believer in precision management, Farver uses Trimble Ag Software’s Advisor Prime platform to plan, manage, and execute strategies to treat each zone in each of his clients’ fields according to its unique needs. The end result? Client profits go up, the risk of over-application goes down, which benefits the environment, and Farver’s day-to-day management of complex prescriptions for countless fields and productivity zones becomes streamlined.
Here’s another example: Farver uses the Crop Health Imagery feature to monitor yield goals for his clients, in the context of local weather impacts. “I can see this field actually got two inches more rain that these other fields and it looks like it will keep getting more,” Farver explained. “When this happens, I am going to put an extra application of nitrogen down where I got more rain, but I won’t on the other fields because less nitrogen will be leaching out. It’s a win-win.”
Benefit #2 – ROI Gains
Every time Farver pulls into a new farmyard to talk about his VRT program, he hears the same question: ‘If I do this, how can I be sure of my ROI?’ For his client pulling in 240-bushel corn mentioned above, the proof is clear. But new growers dipping their toes into precision agriculture take more convincing. Farver takes a big-picture view by looking at what the farmer is currently doing, and then compares that to a VR program that would be created and managed by Farver, with the help of Advisor Prime.
“I explain how I can help them grow their business as a farmer,” Farver said. “I’m going to help them make more money on the same amount of acres they’re currently farming.” While it varies for each farm, Farver typically incorporates three to five different productivity zones into his precision ag plan for each farm. “When they see this, that’s where we’re really able to get down to the acre with them and say, ‘Why would you want to treat this land the same as that land when you can see the differences? Why would you throw that money away?’ If they ask me about all the free services out there today, I tell them yes, I’m not free. But free agronomy is not going to be good agronomy.”
Benefit #3 – VRT Gains
Similar benefits are being reported north of the border. Matt Maess, a crop advisor in North Central Saskatchewan, recently discovered how to leverage his farm management software platform to create variable-rate fungicide maps for his farmer customers, and the payoffs were tangible.
Last year Maess was talking to a client who had been pitched several times by a company that provided satellite imagery of crops in the area. Maess listened to the grower as he explained how this company promised its imagery would provide the exact information the farmer would need to do VR fungicide, and clock significant savings along the way.
Given his familiarity with Trimble Ag Software, Maess was sure that one of its popular features, Crop Health Imagery, could achieve the same goal — without going to an outside source. Maess created the two-zone map using the zone-creation feature in Advisor Prime. Once he created the VR maps, the corresponding shapefiles exported seamlessly into his clients’ Viper Pro and JD 2600 sprayers. The process was simple, and Maess knew he now had an additional service to offer to current and future clients. “As crop advisors, we can go into the software and create zone maps for our clients out of any map that gets put into the system,” Maess explained. “Then we can use any of these to create a map for VR fungicide.”
According to Maess, the VR maps and strategy reduced his client’s overall fungicide cost by a third — which for his clients in Canada would mean $14 an acre, down from $21. For canola, the savings is 30 percent, he said. Pretty impressive results!
Click here for more information on how you can help farmers understand the benefits of Trimble Ag Software.
It’s not very often you hear a senior company executive get excited about how staff are spending less and less time in the office.
But that’s precisely the case at Duncan Family Farms. The Buckeye, Arizona-based vegetable and fruit operation, deployed a new software platform a year ago that has transformed clunky, time-consuming processes into streamlined, automated workflows that boosted productivity, improved decision-making, and empowered staff.
As a result, Duncan’s field team is spending less time in the office because they can capture data and complete tasks right in the field using their mobile phones at the time the event occurs.
“Instead of leaving the field, going back to the desktop in the office, entering the information — and sometimes that Excel document would be locked because someone else was using it, so you’d have to come back — our new system not only saves hours, but also helps us build more consistent routines,” said Sean Duncan, a fifth-generation family farmer and the company’s Director of Supply Chain.
Time saving is “the most concrete and direct benefit” of Duncan’s decision to integrate Trimble Ag Software’s complete farm management software solution across all aspects of its operation. They use the platform to track customers, manage customer data, implement the planting and harvest schedule, and oversee inventory. It includes several customized features developed to meet the unique needs of Duncan’s operation, such as providing real-time calculations of ‘required commitments’, which provides a weekly breakdown of amounts of each commodity required for delivery. This information is used to back-schedule planting schedules in order to meet weekly commitments.
Once the planting schedule is set, seeding applications are established in the office and then shared to workers in the fields via the mobile app. Trimble Ag Mobile is also used to track irrigation, fertilizer applications as well as other inputs used during the growing stage. Additional ‘bin transaction’ customization developed by Trimble engineers comes into play after harvest, when the field team uses the mobile app to create and communicate IDs for each commodity harvested and on its way to logistics. This allows the logistics team to track produce harvested at the time it is received and prepared for delivery. Automated emails are sent to the office team each time a bin transaction activity is entered.
Lynn Godman, Trimble Ag Software’s account manager overseeing Duncan Family Farms, said the input and collaboration from the Duncan team has been a major contributor to the overall success.
“They are really good about diving in and looking around to see where things could be improved. And they aren’t shy about utilizing technology to improve their business.” said Godman. “We’re also creating custom analytics reports for them so they have fast access to data without having to wait for a development team to release canned reports. Now reports are available to them in hours or minutes rather than weeks.”
Embracing the Benefits
Duncan’s first milestone in the Trimble Ag Software deployment was to replace its existing points of data capture, which meant overhauling the planting schedule.
“This was a lot of planning and execution that was done through a very time-consuming process on Excel and our field log, so we spent a lot of time with Trimble building out how we could replace this process,” said Duncan. “Now we’ve fully implemented both of those processes and we’re really pleased. It was about understanding Duncan’s processes, and then understanding what Trimble could do. Overall I really like the approach we took. I’m happy to say the outcome is what we were expecting.”
Duncan and Stephanie Pharris, Supply Chain Specialist, summarized three key benefits to the company following the Trimble Ag Software deployment:
Time Savings
This is probably the most obvious and impactful benefit felt by the entire team, said Duncan. In addition to streamlining that came with the new workflows, the customization Trimble added shaved hours off Duncan’s previous workflow.
“It fully met our needs and now we’re solely reliant on that,” Duncan said. According to Pharris, “That’s one of the things that makes Trimble a great partner, and one thing that makes Duncan different. Both companies are open to looking at how best to achieve the end goal — more than what the individual party is getting out of it,” she said. “They’ve really dug in.”
Going mobile has also made a huge difference in the daily workflows, especially out in the field.
“This is one of the things we liked about Trimble,” said Duncan. “Because of the synergies between the app and the web, the majority of our team at the field level are using the app on their phones, while the people in the office creating the planting schedule are on their desktop.”
Value of Hindsight
One of the key reasons Duncan’s team chose Trimble was the platform’s broad capacity to capture not just current and ongoing activities, but also its ability to compare actual tasks completed to planned tasks. This gave the team a greater opportunity to run scenarios and compare outcomes, explains Duncan.
“When we went through the selection process with Trimble, we really liked their platform for farm management and some of the more sophisticated way of monitoring activities,” says Duncan. “We felt there was a huge benefit to include that planning piece. Not only are you capturing your executed activities, but right in the same platform you’re able to see your planned activities and compare them to the actuals to see what worked.”
Improved Decision-Making
Prior to the Trimble Ag Software deployment, a lot of the information Duncan was capturing on its crops was for compliance and food safety purposes. However, on the old system this data wasn’t readily available to the team and, therefore, couldn’t be fully leveraged.
“Now it’s so visible and we’re able to capture value in that,” he explained. “We can pull that same information and use it to better manage operations. It’s made the data we have more usable, more functional. For example, for a spray event, Trimble Ag Software allows our team to efficiently capture the necessary compliance data. And because features such as scouting report and inventory management are integrated right in the platform, our team can easily use this same spray data that was used for compliance to analyze the cost and performance impact of that spray event.”
Another key benefit of this enhanced visibility of data is more profitable decisions made in real time, said Pharris. “It helps for us to get more granularity in our cost valuations because we can really look at profitability markers and make different decisions,” she explained. “When we ask, ‘Are we getting performance out of our spend?’ We can see that now and use it to make decisions.”
Successful Staff Buy-In
Change management can be one of the greatest challenges facing businesses today. As Duncan began rolling out the new processes enabled by the Trimble platform, Pharris said she was excited to see the team’s positive response.
“You always have the early adopters and we’ve seen some people really shine with it. That’s one of the most rewarding things,” she said. “Watching people out there scouting and they’re really digging into the system! They’re learning it and they’re seeing so much value in it. Seeing that level of engagement? That’s the part I love”
For Mitch Konen, peace of mind means knowing exactly where every dollar is spent in his 1,500-acre farm operation near Fairfield, Montana, and how it’s impacting his bottom line.
Thanks to his Trimble Ag Software Farmer Pro subscription, Konen has full visibility over his farm finances and knows exactly what his break-even price is when harvest time rolls around.
“For the field record and tracking inputs, it works great. Knowing what the costs are on a day-to-day basis means I know virtually what my cost of production is at any time. I also really like the cash and accrual portion, that way I know my break-even cost at the end of the year. It’s just a good business practice,” says Konen. “The key is the enterprise statements — on a per-crop, per-field, per-farm, per-equipment, per-person type of report. You can make decisions based on that.”
Trimble Ag Software garnered attention in recent months as more and more farmers leverage this online, mobile, and desktop software platform to turn farm data into actionable reports they can use on a daily, and even hourly basis to make quick decisions and adjustments that save time and drive farm profits.
With the Farmer Fit and Farmer Pro ag software software bundle, farmers get access to Trimble’s integrated desktop mapping, field record-keeping, and simple cash accounting. Built on the foundation of Farm Works Software®, which Trimble acquired in 2009, the desktop platform is turning farm data into profitable decisions for customers around the world.
With the software farmers can:
Track Cost Per Unit of Production for each field to get real-time knowledge about expenses and break-even calculations throughout the growing season.
Generate Profit Maps so you can deep-dive into each field and see what precision farming practices are most profitable.
Sync your desktop data, including field records and precision farming maps, to the cloud and mobile app to access data anywhere, anytime.
“Come tax season I have everything on one platform, all I have to do is print off an income statement and every detail goes with it. I can also print off a depreciation schedule that has all the equipment purchases,” says Konen.
He also uses the platform to print out a family living report so he knows where the family money is going. “It’s even broken down into utilities, what propane costs it took to heat the house, groceries,” says Konen. “It gives me a full spreadsheet of every dime and dollar that’s spent on the farm. That’s tied to my field maps so when I pull my yield maps off the combine I know exactly what my break-even is, so I know what price I need.”
Konen is also starting to leverage Trimble Ag Mobile and Crop Health Imagery.
