Automatic section controls (ASC) are the latest of a suite of technological devices that can help farmers use crop inputs more precisely for the maximum return. Although the devices can be expensive, farmers say rising production costs are making the equipment increasingly attractive.
The last time he bought a planter, Atkins, Ark., farmer Robert Stobaugh decided against the $13,000 cost of the ASC option. Now, Stobaugh told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, it’s getting to the point where he can justify the expenditure. Stobaugh, who grows soybeans, corn, rice and wheat on 6,000 acres in Pope and Conway Counties in the Arkansas River Valley, said precision planting enables him to produce a more homogenous crop across a field and to get the most out of his seed. “If you have the overlaying maps that we can now generate at harvest time to see where your highly productive soils are in a given field, you can actually adjust that planter to plant seeds according to your prescription into those highly productive areas, and then cut the seed rate back on the areas that might not be quite so productive,” he said.
Without ASC, Stobaugh can still lay down seed more efficiently, but he has to do it manually. He generates the production maps at harvest using his GPS system, and uses the computer on the planter to generate an accurate seed population. Then, he varies seeding rates simply by speeding up and slowing down the planter.
The ASC knows where the planter has laid down seed; it fills in skips, avoids double seeding, and shuts off the section when done. Jim Arnaud uses it to plant the corn he feeds the 100 dairy cows and 250 beef cows on his Monett, Mo., operation. “We have individual shutoffs on every row,” Arnaud told OFN. “We have a precision instrument called a 20/20, and it monitors our complete corn planter function. If you have a chain that’s a little bit dry and tries to hop, it will tell you if you have a problem. If you’re having a skip in one box, it will tell you, and if you’re dropping doubles. So it does control the section control on the planter and as you get to the end of a field, it will start shutting your boxes off one at a time.”
It’s just one of several precision instruments Arnaud uses; he also applies pesticides and fertilizer using automatic controls. But those inputs can be applied with less precision; for seed, Arnaud has his ASC linked to a subscription satellite service. For an annual price of $800, he said he gets repeatable accuracy of about 2 to 3 inches; by comparison, he said without the subscription, “If you leave the field and come back two hours later, the signal you’re receiving that’s telling you where to drive could be off 2 to 3 feet very easily, and that only increases with time.”
And he has other precision instruments on the planter; one called “Down Force” monitors the ground compact of the row units. Arnaud said, “If you don’t have enough ground contact because you’re maybe in a rocky area, we have airbags on our planter just like the big trucks have airbags for their suspension, and there’s a big pump that will automatically add more air to those bags, and put more pressure down.”
All of the farm’s tractors employ a precision GPS, and some of them have autosteer. Arnaud’s sprayer uses both technologies. “When you get to the end of your field, it automatically shuts your sections off with the whole boom if you’re hitting a square corner,” he said. “If you’re not, and finishing off a lot of irregular fields like we’re prone to have, it’ll start shutting the sections off one at a time as you come across an area that’s sprayed. That is a huge, huge payback there with the price of chemicals.” And he’s been using GPS on his fertilizer spreader for many years. “You can pick up some of this GPS technology that’s not autosteer for $2,500 brand new. If you’re spreading much fertilizer, that’s about a one-year payback on the price of fertilizer from either skipping or overspreading.”
The cost of inputs is a big reason Stobaugh sees the use of precision technology growing in Arkansas. “When you’re talking about the amount of money that we spend on seed these days, it’s going to become more and more important to put it exactly where it needs to be, and exactly the rate it needs to be. But until we have top to bottom precision applicators, whether it be in fertilizer, seed or anything else, it’s a little bit hard to justify.”
