too much technology

[tman]

I know several farmers with gps, anywhere from the cheap, free signal ones to the $50,000 autosteer ones that are deadly accurate. And I've been impressed with fields seeded with those units, not to mention using gps myself for soil sampling and getting back to a flag within inches.

But I've also heard, seen and experienced the down side when the junk doesn't work, due to lost signal, software problems, lack of accuracy, etc etc.

All you need to fix a marker is a welder or a new hydraulic hose. You can't say the same for gps. I felt like fixing a gps the one day with a sledge hammer.

Since we're only cropping about 900 acres, I'm going more for reliability than anything else. We've been using tramlines with our hoe drill and plan to do the same with the air seeder.

[tman]

oops, that post was meant to go to my previous message

[ALLFARMER]

There are still alot of acres seeded with less than high teck equipment. The biggest advantage to newer equipment (air seeders)is the ability to seed alot of acres in one day. New to newer equipment does not assure you of great crops & land seeded with older equipment has brought some great crops. Its like cattle breds what animal or equipment works best for you. It's not always clear from year to year.

[aggpsdave]

Bottom line Technology will always Win either get with the times or stay stagnat as we move forward in this century.

[ALLFARMER]

"bottom line is technology will allways win"

Farming is not that simple, technology is no guarantee for profitablity. How does a combine with a yield monitor make more bushels than one without? Why are more farmers still using markers for seeding and not autosteer? Farmers do have to keep up with the times but being the first farmer with the latest and greatest technology does not give you a significant advantage over farmers who don't have it. If it did farmers would be buying new equipment all the time, depreciation on a 3 or 4 year old equipment would be extreem. In reality equipment dealers are likely selling 70-80% used equipment compared too new. Many sales yards only sell used machinery.

Let someone else find the lemons I say!

[tman]

Technology will always win? (ha ha ha, sorry, I'm still laughing)

Here we are, being able to let computers and satelites steer our equipment across fields within an inch of the last pass, harvest 5000bu/hour (or whatever the number was from the Cat/Lexion combine ad), able to kill "every" weed in a field with one pass of a sprayer, seed now with a 74' air drill, etc, etc,

... and lose the most money in a year than we ever have before.

Yup, looks like all this technology is the way to go (this is to be read with sarcasm).

I had two farmers tell me last spring that they weren't making any money when they harvested 80bu/ac of HRSW (with their quarter of a million $ combines and $1-200,000 tractors, paying $50/ac pesticide, 75 for rent, etc etc). That was after all the drying costs and down grades.

One of my clients bought an autosteer last spring for their airdrill/sprayer. They had to go back with their old, little disc drill and seed in the gaps across some of their 1300ac of wheat. They never had misses until last year when he let a computer do the driving and not him. And the seed rows are not any straighter. (I think it worked better at spraying time though.)

I guess this is what happens when we get lazy and need a computer to do the work for us. Like a feedlot owner said (in the fall '05 issue of The Cattleman), no one wants to do "work work".

[SpaceKadet]

Only 100 years ago there were more acres farmed with animal power than tractors. There was a technological shift that we have grown to accept as the status quo. Technology is changing all the time at a faster rate. The first steam powered tractors were not reliable neither were the first GPS guidance systems. The newer guidance systems are getting pretty good now and much cheaper, so are easier to justify on an increasingly small acerage.

As with any new technology here sia lot of misleading information and false claims, so until we master the technology I think that misses and other problems will happen. As with the first tractors, farmers learnt to master the technology, so to, we need to master this one if we want to succeed.

[shamus]

My neighbours new autosteer didn't look so hot this spring either!! They did better without it.