Oklahoma Farm Report’s Maci Carter caught up with Ryan Stien of John Deere to talk about precision agriculture which is two-fold at the JD dealership: the technology that exists on the machine, and the data management side via the John Deer Operations Center web-based, computer program.
The program is free to use for John Deere customers and those who aren’t. It shows what the equipment has done and where it is. The information is shareable, and the user can decide which information to share with their agronomist, John Deere dealership, family member, or others.
John Deere’s vision for the customer’s use of the John Deere Operations Center is for everything that a customer has in their equipment shed to be represented in the user’s program whether it bears the John Deere brand or not. Also, for every seed and chemical put on a field to be represented in the program. This will help farmers plan the next year’s seeding rates and input type and rates and communicate those plans to the tractor the next time it enters the field.
“This eliminates spending time at the side of the field trying to remember which product they wanted to use, or the existence of a guidance line or not,” Stien said. “It is all taken care of because the work got done in the off-season to put into a work plan to be executed when they get to the field. We have that digital representation of the farm, then it happens in the field.”
Farmers make hundreds of decisions throughout the year about planting, inputs, harvest, and more, often with much uncertainty. John Deere Operations Center allows farmers to conduct hypothetical trials using equipment they own on fields they own which are represented in the program.
For example, if the farmer wants to try out a new input, the app keeps track of exactly where the product was placed, and it also keeps track of the harvest rates of the entire operation. In the program, a farmer can bring up two side-by-side maps to determine if there was a yield increase from the application and exactly how much of an increase there was to determine if it was cost-effective or not.
“As we come into more down times in the ag economy, it is so important to get every dollar I can out of my decisions, and Operations Center is the tool to use to look back at the ROI scorecard of which decisions paid off or not,” Stien said.
As John Deere and other equipment companies are constantly releasing new and updated equipment, Operations Center stays up with the times by updating every two months with product enhancements and tweaks and keeps users informed of the changes through Release Notes, which are emailed every two months to describe the new features.
“We are very committed to making Operations Center a premier tool for farmers,” Stien said. “Then we also do the same cadence on Operations Center Mobile, which is the app-based system available for Android and I.O.S. systems so farmers can see the same information on their phone as they do in the web-based tool.”
John Deere Operations Center includes four key components to make it more user-friendly: Set Up, Plan, Monitor, and Analyze. Set Up involves more of the heavy work in winter months, during the off-season, to put all of the information about the equipment, seed, and products in the shed into the program. This can be done easily by scanning the serial number on a piece of equipment with the camera on a phone with the mobile app installed.
Once tangible things are set up in the user’s account, the Plan feature is for inputting the information that will be sent to the equipment to utilize when they reach the field.
The Monitor feature is to watch sprayers or combines making their way across the fields and capture data about what is being done.
The Analyze component features tools to analyze yields in the fields, machinery, and variety performance across the farm.
More information can be found at deere.com, or go to operationscenter.deere.com and set up a free account to use.
