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Missouri | I think two good places to start are yield monitoring, and planter row shutoffs.
Planter row shutoffs are the fastest payback. I have measured seed savings of 5%-7%, the sales claim (which often quotes extension studies) is that up to 10% is possible. The planting layout of your fields will determine how much you actually save. The yield improvement in areas of overlapped planter coverage is, in my opinion, difficult to quantify, but I believe with confidence that it is there. I don't quote that as a figure, I just consider it icing on the seed cost savings cake. The sooner you go with planter shutoffs, the sooner it starts saving you money. Once it has paid for itself, it can then pay for future upgrades, like autosteer.
Yield monitoring is the other end of the spectrum. It doesn't directly pay you anything. Potential gains here come from improved management decisions you can make based on your yield data. Some of this requires multiple years of yield data. When it's going to take that long to collect years of data, it's best to start as soon as possible.
Unless there's a reason you need autosteer (strip-till, etc), I tend to consider it a luxury item. It's certainly worth having, but if you have budget constraints, I would not make autosteer a priority over other choices that save money/make money.
Ag Leader's pretty tough to beat. They've got the best box for doing everything, on every color of equipment. I can think of a thing or two they don't do best, but I cannot think of anything they do poorly | |
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New to precision. Where to start?
