About Ag Connections
Ag Connections develops and continuously updates crop management software solutions that make our clients’ lives easier and their farms more efficient and compliant. Our experienced crop management specialists help farmers get these systems up and running with a mix of on-site training, web-based training, video tutorials, and friendly, knowledgeable phone support.
GreenStar 2 Integration goes Spatial
Mar 30, 2009
Ag Connections’ latest GS2 tools are working toward the precision farming dream.
The early days of precision agriculture, or spatially-intensive “farming by the foot”, promised ways to increase farming efficiency, reduce waste, and tailor the application of chemicals and other inputs specifically to the crops’ needs as these vary across the field, while promoting sustainable agriculture in general. Over ten years later, the early dreams have not all come true, partly because growers are overwhelmed by having to deal with so many different tools to handle so many different kinds of data.
Sophisticated field computers and controllers like John Deere’s GreenStar 2 Series, collect vast amounts of data from farm machinery: as-applied maps, yield maps, timing information, field boundaries, guidance lines, and so on. This information is stored in a memory card on the controller, and can provide a huge value to the user.
Ag Connections’ core products are comprehensive agricultural production recordkeeping tools; our users praise them for their power and ease of use. Ag Connections will soon be releasing new GreenStar 2 integration tools for the 2009 harvest season, that bridge the divide between the spatial agronomy data on the controller, and the practical decisionmaking data on the production recordkeeping system.
The new tool, Land.EC 8.20, includes a powerful data mapping engine that makes it easy to translate field and product names back and forth between Land.db, John Deere’s Apex software, and the GreenStar 2 series of field controllers. This makes it simple for the grower to match up data collected in the field with the data in the desktop.
Land.EC version 9.0, to be released in late 2009, includes the capability to display and store on the PC the as-applied maps and yield maps coming from the card, and to convert that information into product application and harvest record-keeping data in Land.db, thus bridging the divide between recordkeeping and precision agriculture software.