Week 4 - Precision Agriculture Technology

During the summer of 2016 I was a Precision Agriculture Intern through our local John Deere dealership, Gooseneck Implement.  Prior to my internship I knew little about precision agriculture or how it affects growers and producers.  I enjoyed my internship greatly and I was able to expand my knowledge on modern farming practices.

The Precision Agriculture department at Gooseneck Implement consists of 3 separate branches.  These include Data Management, Integrated Solutions, and Agronomy.  In order for the Precision Agriculture Department to be successful it requires all 3 of these branches to communicate and work together.  To clarify, precision agriculture is a farming management concept based on observing, measuring, and responding to field data. 

The Integrated Solutions department is responsible for the precision agriculture technology itself.  The IS staff's duty consists of a lot of farmer visits to communicate with them and let them know about the technology that John Deere offers.  Autosteer is a very popular technology that is offered to farmers that allows them to operate their machinery through a satellite, GPS control.  The tractor basically drives itself.  This allows farmers to follow exact lines in order to help them manage their crops and keep everything precise.

The Agronomy branch of the department is largely grower focused.  The agronomists are available to growers as a resource to help them make the best management decisions that they can.  Agronomists offer insight to fertilizer recommendations, seed varieties, and application times/uses.  The agronomists spend a large amount of their time out in the field working directly with the growers and observing their crops and gathering data.  They see the real-world application of the technology that they Integrated Solutions department supplies the farmers with.

The Data Management department takes the information and resources that come together from the Agronomists and IS staff and compiles it together.  Once a grower harvests their crop, their technology in the tractor formulates a map of the field and shows the spots that produce the most and yield the highest. The data management staff then takes the maps that are produced based off of the field data and creates an image that is user friendly to provide farmers with.  They basically are the end product of the interactions between the agronomist and the grower along with the technology that the IS crew provided for the grower.  This explains how the Precision Agriculture world works!