CHICAGO, Ill. — Mark von Pentz focused his presentation around three numbers — 40, 90 and 50.
The president of Deere & Co. Ag & Turf for Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Asia and Africa, said those three numbers illustrate the staggering po-tential of precision farming.
“A combine is only using 60 percent of its installed capacity today, only 60 percent,” he told del-egates attending the 2016 DTN Ag Summit.
“The same iron could run 40 percent more.”
Von Pentz said 100 percent utilization is impossible, but Deere is working on boosting capacity utilization to 70 or 80 percent, which would contribute an extra $25 per acre to the bottom line.
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Steve Redmond, precision agriculture specialist with Hensall District Co-operative, agreed that there is a lot of untapped potential with the sophisticated computer equipment on farm machinery.
He recently spoke to a customer who pulled off some fuel consumption data from his combine.
“This guy had one area that was quite weedy and he could see the fuel consumption went way up,” said Redmond.
The customer determined he had to get better on weed control, not only to improve his yields but to achieve lower fuel consumption. The decision could not have been reached without today’s big data.
The second number von Pentz mentioned comes from a United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization study that determined less than 10 percent of all the pesticides applied to crops around the world end up on a weed or sick plant.
“There is more than 90 percent waste on what is sprayed today,” said von Pentz.
“The chemical industry doesn’t like this message necessarily, but what an economic headroom potential by eliminating waste.”
Farmers could save $70 to $80 per acre if they got to 30 to 50 percent waste instead of 90 percent.
“Those are the elements we’re working on,” he said.
Redmond disputes the FAO numbers. He said it may be accurate for insect control, but late-season disease and weed control is more efficient.
However, he agreed there is room for improvement, such as drone imagery to target pests more accurately.
As well, the best sprayer technology can allow individual nozzles to be turned on and off to hit only the targeted plants or pests.
The third number is nitrogen uptake, which is 50 percent for the average wheat crop in Europe.
Deere is working with third party companies to increase nitrogen uptake, minimizing the waste and environmental concerns associated with unutilized nitrogen.
Redmond said there is no doubt precision technology can dramatically increase nitrogen use efficiency in a variety of crops.
He said saving $1 or $2 per acre can have a big impact on the bottom line for large farms as margins become tighter.
Deere will continue to shift research and development dollars into precision agriculture because it feels that is the best way to help farmers increase their profits.
“That’s a big change for us as a company because in the past it was about more lift capacity, more torque and bigger and stronger equipment,” said von Pentz.
He said they are still working on all those attributes but also on making machines smarter.
Deere used to want to be the sole provider of precision agriculture products to its customers, but now it is allowing other companies to connect to its operations centre.
“We want to build the iTunes of our industry,” said von Pentz.
“If Dow has a better app than we have, we will allow that to run. We don’t want to lock you into a John Deere system.”
