technt77

The GPS features that blow me away the most are their practical uses to help farmers work more efficiently. A few years ago John Deere came out with GreenStar, a system that is designed to provide customers with the ability to collect data from planting to harvest adn every operation that is performed before, during, and after this time period.

Farmers can red-flag danger areas like rocks so they can avoid them in the future, and they can print out maps of their fields that utilize color coding to show moisture content of the grain and yields at certain points in the field. The resulting information over a period of time allows them to practice precision farming where they utilize more or less fertilizer or herbicides and pesticides on specific parts of their field instead of blanketing the entire field with their chemicals.

GPS makes this all possible.

kitkat86

I agree that GPS can help farmers immensely. But there is still one thing they need that no technology (at least at the present) can help with -- rain. If they don't get rain, they don't get any crops.

technt77

Tell me about it . . . but even so, in the irrigated parts of our country, the GPS will help farmers determine amounts of irrigation to utilize. For the dry farmers, well, I guess their hope lies in prayer.

tiggapooh

I used to work at a grain elevator and therefore dealt a lot with the agriculture buseness. Our company owned one of the very first gpas for ag and bacck then you had to write a program for each farmer's field and put in on a diskette and then the person running the big terragaotr would put than diskette into the gps when he got to the farmer's field. Of course, I was the only that could do that at our elevator for a long time. I mean that's how far the gps has come. You mentioned being able to locate rock for the farmer. It's amazing. You guys sound like you could use some rain too. I have been praying for the farmers. We live in SD in an agriculture community so I pray for them a lot.

technochick

That does sound like a worthy device. They've come a long way from the Farmer's almanac

technt77

Tell me about it. I'm always amazed as I watch my father farmer even utilize the internet to help make choices in farming. He markets his grain according to what the online markets say, and he constantly checks the weather using the live dopplar radar online.