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Equipment investments grow yields
Historical spikes in commodity prices have allowed investments in technology that one farmer says have resulted in improved production. At the Precision Planting Winter Conference in Tremont, Illinois, Mark Schleder tells Brownfield Ag News his ability to invest in planting equipment led to more bushels per acre.
“A lot of people, back a few years ago, thought $7 corn was not good for farmers,” said Schleder, who farms near Green Valley, Illinois, just south of Pekin. “I know there’s one thing that it helped when we had $7 corn; it got more of this technology into farmers’ hands.”
Schleder is referring to after-market equipment that uses precision data to place multiple hybrids at a depth that will take the greatest advantage of optimum soil moisture and soil temperature. It’s equipment engineered for existing planters. The company, and it’s data monitors, down-force machinery and multiple-hybrid seed boxes can be characterized with just a few words, according to Bryce Baker, integrated marketing manager at Precision Planting.
“We’re kind of the hotrod shop for planters,” Baker told Brownfield at Precision Planting’s Annual Winter Conference, which is this week at its company headquarters in Tremont, Illinois. “Hot-rodding a car is for pleasure, but when you outfit a planter with Precision Planting products it’s to increase your return on that investment.”
Depending on the Precision Planting products added, retrofits and upgrades to planters easily run into tens of thousands of dollars, although new products introduced on Tuesday could potentially save money compared to the company’s older technology. The mSet multi-hybrid system, for instance, has a dual compartment seed hopper and a single seed selector meter. That’s less expensive than employing two meters per row on planters currently designed to switch back and forth between separate hybrids, according to Baker.
For Schleder, who has been using the planter technology for several years, it’s about seeing a return on investment.
“Just the little things that we do can amount to a lot of yield in a field,” said Schleder, “so being able to get that bottom line up with this technology is a huge factor.”
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