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| I am not defending John Deere but let’s face it, yes the remote sensing part of JD's Agri-Services has been discontinued, but why? Obvious the projected revenue and/or business interest was not supported by the cost of support. Many Remote Sensing companies that targeted agriculture (both satellite and airborne companies) have come and gone. It’s a tough business. We have been using remote sensing images on our farm for the last 10 years. We have had the proper software to manipulate the images to make solid decision from (this software costs between $2,500 to $5,000). But for the average farmer, this is not the case (they balk at spending several hundred dollars for a software package); these images become just an interesting picture, but these pictures are just a moment in time. These images need to be taken at the proper time depending on the crop and growth stage and outcome desired. Also the average farmer doesn’t understand the value of NIR, rNDVI, or gNDVI without training. And where do they get this training?
If you look at John Deere’s long term commitment to Precision Agriculture, it’s a company to be reckoned with. The engineering commitment they are providing is astounding. Will they make mistakes along the way, of course? But if they try to provide a service to the ag community and it doesn’t work, they are smart enough to realize not to put good money after bad. For those farmers that have invested into the John Deere technology, let us hope they stay strong as a company, and be willing to understand that they will make mistakes along the way.
gary
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JD is partly closing down Agri Service?
