I've been attending my fair share of farm meetings this winter - already - and the fun part of that is spending time with producers talking about key challenges and opportunities they're facing in their businesses. There's a sense of angst out there this winter as more of you deploy new farm technologies beyond auto steering. The challenge is that farmers who are already excellent agronomists in their own right are suddenly being called on to become farm technology experts as…

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The 2012 Drought is so top-of-mind for everyone that a wide range of thoughts and ideas keep surfacing as we work our way through this disaster. Whether you're worried about crop insurance payments or what nitrate levels you have in corn you're going to chop, there's plenty to think about. But as combining begins in the Midwest - heck it's fired - we have something else to think about. Back in the 1988 drought we didn't have yield monitors, grid soil sampling or other data gathering tools…

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In this month's Farmer Iron column found in your favorite Farm Progress magazine, I took a look at that robot tractor idea Kinze demonstrated ahead of the fall Farm Shows. This is exciting tech for managing grain harvest, and for planting. While it's not ready for prime time - yet - it's interesting to note that some of the systems in use are similar to what you can find on new cars. Think about it. Ford, GM and others are now making it easy for anyone to parallel park. The system uses sensors…

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Getting access to RTK-level GPS services is going to get easier - at least in the region covered by the MyWay RTK group. Based in Effingham, Ill., the organization - formed by a group of precision ag players - is offering a new service MyWayXchange. The system is designed to help service resellers better service customers. According to a release from the organization, the online tool will connect resellers and customers in real time by providing live information about customers and base…

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In March we told you about a move by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to allow the company LightSquared to move ahead with a plan to use a signal for advanced 4G cell phone service that could interfere with the GPS satellite signal you receive. The industry coalition that formed to fight that move - saveourgps.org moved fast to get the FCC to slow down the idea of letting LightSquared fire up its new network. Fast forward to this week, where LightSquared has offered its solution to…

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There's a new item in the old "you can't make this up" category of government action and it involves GPS technology. Essentially, the Federal Communications Commission - working at a speed unprecedented for a government agency - has cleared the use of radio spectrum directly next to the signal GPS satellites use for a new ground-based service that could cause significant interference issues. You read it right, the GPS system which consumers, airline pilots (I'm especially concerned here…

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This week I'm attending a crop science conference in Long Beach, Calif. This meeting, which brings together three big science organizations - including the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America and the Soil Science Society of America, is chock full of scientific presentations and one in particular caught my eye. The report showed the latest results from an ongoing series of Ohio State University studies that look at the adoption of precision ag technology. This is a…

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Fieldwork across the United States is almost never done, depending on the weather so "wrapping up" a farm season may be a misnomer. As farmers in the Midwest work to bring in the last few acres of corn and soybeans (despite hurricane force winds this week), winter wheat growers are already putting in the crop for 2011. And the farther south you go the more work there is. Time spent in Georgia last week, with growers who were working hard to finish the cotton and peanut harvest brings to mind…

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Imagine a tractor rolling by you and the only sound is the scrape of the chisel plow through the soil. It's an interesting picture to contemplate, and while the idea may be a ways off farmers got a look at such a potential future during Farm Progress Show and Husker Harvest Days this year. The NH2 tractor from New Holland is a concept vehicle designed to allow engineers to test out ideas and see what might work. In this case, the tractor, which is a hand-built prototype on a T6000 platform…

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We're less than a week from the 2010 Farm Progress Show and I'm excited. I know there's a pile of new equipment that'll be on hand; and new technology from seed and crop protection companies we'll want to know more about. We've already covered the Agco Super 7 launch on the Web, and next week you'll see even more new equipment profiled online. And if you're headed to the show plan on catching those tools there. The website has plenty of tools for helping you find your way there and around the…

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