Stop in for a cup of coffee

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dukeboy_318 said:
actually, for most farmers under 1000 acres, its not, at least it'd take longer to pay for itself. For what was shown in that video. What they don't talk about in that video is the GPS guided Green star/autosteer program and row smart sense systems, or even the Precision Planting systems help a ton. Not in fuel savings. But rather in yields. Straight rows down to the 1/4 inch means less waste, plus the systems can read nutrient levels during planting and automatically adjust seed count by the foot. That translates into knowing how much fertilizer to dump where and it adjusts for foot. so again, less waste. same with herbicides and pesticides.

With those systems, farmers are now seeing yields in the high 60s to low 80 bushels per acres on soybeans, 270-320 on corn. All while using less fertilizer, chemicals and seed counts than we did when me and my grandfather were farming 15-20 years ago and before. In the 90s, a bumper crop for beans mean 40 bushels an acre and 150 bushels an acre corn. And that was with GMOs. The exact same seed formulas are now producing twice that. We aren't using John Deere's system. We're using precision planting. Which does everything but control/drive the equipment, all that is still manual controlled. But Precision planting costs about 16,000 dollars compared to the John Deere equivalent which is about 38,000. Plus another 22,000 if you want auto steer, which is what both that combine and tractor in the video had. That's to retro fit it to older models. Then you still have the annual fee, precision planting is a flat 1200 dollar a year fee for the GPS, John Deere's varies but we were quoted 4,000 per lot.

Take soybeans at 40 bushells and acre. Say you have 50 acres of beans that's 2,000 bushels, at 10 bucks roughly per bushel, thats 20,000 dollars. Now bump that to what we averaged to day, which was 74 bushells, say 50 acres again, that's 3700 bushells, times 10 bucks a bushell, 37,000 dollars for a net difference of 17,000. We actually used LESS seed than we did 15 years ago too. Which saved about 2500-3000 in seed cost. So if they just use something like that, without the auto steer/autopilot stuff, you it can pay for itself really quick.

As for the system that was in the video. That combine costs 650,000 new, fully equipped with all that, not counting the 60-75,000 for the head. Then you have that 5,000 computer PER tractor you want to run it in, plus the 22,000 for autosteer, ontop of that 275,000-300,000 4WD tractor and the 60,000 dollar grain cart. So yeah, most hobby farmers aren't going to be using that.
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Well said. I asked a few of my ag techs (who also farm) as to whether all the computers and satellite tech are worth it. As the implements get bigger 30' out from the tractor cab is a long ways away. The satellite can be within inches for tillage and more importantly, fertilizer, weed killer, insecticide, soil amendments, and the most important, planting. As close as the rows and seed population are nowadays, 6" off for a half mile row could add up to thousands of dollars loss. The guys at the Coop can grab a thumb drive from the farmer and plug it into the sprayer computer and head off over the field. When the sprayer get's close to a old feedlot a half dozen sprayer nozzles shut off because the soil samples and the computer says the fert isn't necessary there. Just there though. The rest of the sprayer is adding chemicals. Sorry to ramble on. I get it though.
 
toolmanmike said:
Well said. I asked a few of my ag techs (who also farm) as to whether all the computers and satellite tech are worth it. As the implements get bigger 30' out from the tractor cab is a long ways away. The satellite can be within inches for tillage and more importantly, fertilizer, weed killer, insecticide, soil amendments, and the most important, planting. As close as the rows and seed population are nowadays, 6" off for a half mile row could add up to thousands of dollars loss. The guys at the Coop can grab a thumb drive from the farmer and plug it into the sprayer computer and head off over the field. When the sprayer get's close to a old feedlot a half dozen sprayer nozzles shut off because the soil samples and the computer says the fert isn't necessary there. Just there though. The rest of the sprayer is adding chemicals. Sorry to ramble on. I get it though.
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Yep, the system we run has the option to live feed it to a cloud server as well. From there you can select who can see the data and the local farm center can pull it up as well
 
toolmanmike said:
Well said. I asked a few of my ag techs (who also farm) as to whether all the computers and satellite tech are worth it. As the implements get bigger 30' out from the tractor cab is a long ways away. The satellite can be within inches for tillage and more importantly, fertilizer, weed killer, insecticide, soil amendments, and the most important, planting. As close as the rows and seed population are nowadays, 6" off for a half mile row could add up to thousands of dollars loss. The guys at the Coop can grab a thumb drive from the farmer and plug it into the sprayer computer and head off over the field. When the sprayer get's close to a old feedlot a half dozen sprayer nozzles shut off because the soil samples and the computer says the fert isn't necessary there. Just there though. The rest of the sprayer is adding chemicals. Sorry to ramble on. I get it though.
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And yeah, and the tractors have had to get so responsive now a days, that the slightest move on the wheel, and it turns. They’ve always been really responsive, more so than a modern rack and pinion in even sports cars thanks to hydraulic steering, so the bigger the implements, the bigger the tractor and the larger the room for human error. We’ll likely never go auto steer unless we start renting ground again. As there’s not much gain for us. The biggest advantage to auto steer is like they showed in the video, ease of unloading on the move. It can be done manually and my brother and I have managed to get our timing down pat to where we can do it with manual control.
 
dukeboy_318 said:
Yep, the system we run has the option to live feed it to a cloud server as well. From there you can select who can see the data and the local farm center can pull it up as well
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That all is so cool. Farmers are really techno nowadays.
 
toolmanmike said:
That all is so cool. Farmers are really techno nowadays.
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Yeah but as I and my grandfather both proved over the last week, there are drawbacks and you can’t rely on them.

computer was telling my brother that the beans were ready to harvest. So him and especially my dad were adamantly insisting we run them Saturday. I kept telling them too wet, stalks and pods at the bottom were still green. Jammed up the combine several times and we now have 1,000 bushels sitting in the bin that not only needs dried but we have to run it thru a cleaner because with it being so dense, the beans are full of debris. I wanted to wait a week, until middle of this week, they didn’t. The moisture levels were in the high 17s... the elevators won’t take them over 18. And they dock a .50 cent per percentage point over 13.9 Per bushel. They finally listened about 9 pm Saturday night. Waited until today, as I wanted, and despite the .08 inches of rain we got overnight, the beans ran today tested at 12.6. Perfect! Elevator pays premium of 7 cents per bushel for beans between 12.5 and 13.0.... so we hauled nearly 50 tons to the elevator this evening
 
dukeboy_318 said:
Yeah but as I and my grandfather both proved over the last week, there are drawbacks and you can’t rely on them.

computer was telling my brother that the beans were ready to harvest. So him and especially my dad were adamantly insisting we run them Saturday. I kept telling them too wet, stalks and pods at the bottom were still green. Jammed up the combine several times and we now have 1,000 bushels sitting in the bin that not only needs dried but we have to run it thru a cleaner because with it being so dense, the beans are full of debris. I wanted to wait a week, until middle of this week, they didn’t. The moisture levels were in the high 17s... the elevators won’t take them over 18. And they dock a .50 cent per percentage point over 13.9 Per bushel. They finally listened about 9 pm Saturday night. Waited until today, as I wanted, and despite the .08 inches of rain we got overnight, the beans ran today tested at 12.6. Perfect! Elevator pays premium of 7 cents per bushel for beans between 12.5 and 13.0.... so we hauled nearly 50 tons to the elevator this evening
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Interesting story but familiar. Beans can be pretty tricky for sure. I remember $4/ bu was a big price.
 
I was out roamin' around the valley not long ago and ran across a couple of cultivators in the strawberry fields. 2/3 the size of a Farmall pulling a 6 row implement, either drones or autosteer, not sure which. Couple fellows sitting at the end of the rows in their pickups watching or operating.
 
I’m really watching what’s happening in Iowa right now. They lost/had damaged an estimated 14 million acres worth of crops in that massive delrico storm the other month. Bean and corn prices jumped 30 percent because of that. Plus they had several storage bins destroyed. Iowa produces 20 percent of the worlds corn and soybeans all by themselves. So expect prices on everything to skyrocket 30 percent or better, groceries, fuels, plastics, makeup etc in the next 6-9 months. Stock up on what you can now as you’re gonna thank me later
 
The Ag business has changed so much round here. At one time potatoes and sugar beets covered a lot of the valley floor with the occasional corn field, some feed corn for the local dairies some sweet and a few strawberries. Then cauliflower and broccoli took over. Now everyting is covered with hoops, can't tell if it's raspberries, blue berries, or Pot. :lol: We even had our own Union Sugar plant, harvest season the entire valley smelled like baked potatoes from them sugar beets :lol:. Looked forward to when they rotated artichokes in for the soil. :lol: Just before they would take the flail mower to it after harvest I run out there and go through the culls :rofl:
 
Unconventional said:
The Ag business has changed so much round here. At one time potatoes and sugar beets covered a lot of the valley floor with the occasional corn field, some feed corn for the local dairies some sweet and a few strawberries. Then cauliflower and broccoli took over. Now everyting is covered with hoops, can't tell if it's raspberries, blue berries, or Pot. :lol: We even had our own Union Sugar plant, harvest season the entire valley smelled like baked potatoes from them sugar beets :lol:. Looked forward to when they rotated artichokes in for the soil. :lol: Just before they would take the flail mower to it after harvest I run out there and go through the culls :rofl:
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There’s a bunch of niche crops that have cult followings now besides even pot. Or hemp.
Lavender is a BIG one right now. Done right, just 50 acres of lavender can net you over 1 million gross a year
 
The broccoli and cauliflower gang had a connection with Asia. A good share of the local harvests were picked the way Asia preferred it and it went straight to the port for a sea voyage and premium $$$. Some of the elevated portions of the valley are lost sand dunes from the beach. A real PIA to construct anything on but the strawberries love it. The grape vineyards have passed their 30 year life cycle and most have been pushed up in piles and burned. Who knows what crop will take their place while the soil rebuilds.
 
Unconventional said:
The broccoli and cauliflower gang had a connection with Asia. A good share of the local harvests were picked the way Asia preferred it and it went straight to the port for a sea voyage and premium $$$. Some of the elevated portions of the valley are lost sand dunes from the beach. A real PIA to construct anything on but the strawberries love it. The grape vineyards have passed their 30 year life cycle and most have been pushed up in piles and burned. Who knows what crop will take their place while the soil rebuilds.
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Yeah. It’s neat to see actually. But it’s also why China won’t ever go to war against us. They can’t feed themselves. Seriously
 
All the years i was in construction I saw 2
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Cats. First on a massive housing subdivision in LA County. Second pioneering the hills just south of me for the grapes. They were real serious when that first round of grapes went in the ground here. A lot of the vineyards up north were at the end of their cycle and the winos needed grapes in the ground NOW. :lol:
 
Morning!
No rain in forecast. Thats a good thing.
Forecast says snow by the weekend. Not so good.
 
Morning Frank. Hey I found the stop light switch, cannot find the choke controller. Will see if I can put it with the calendar if it goes reg rate non media, no idea yet.
 
Morning Ray! No worries, i have it wired hot with the key, it works for moving around.
Worst case i will grab the one off the dart when its ready to drive.
 
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