My career before choosing to stay home was in ag technology. I got to test really cool emerging technology that very few knew existed. I loved it and totally geeked out when we got to ground truth everything during the growing season.
Since I left my job, the ag tech realm hasn’t slowed down, not even a little. I had my first experience with Pioneer Seeds and their aerial drone stand counts this season and was very impressed with what this technology could do on our farm.
We scout our fields early, take stand counts, dig up plants, and stage crops so we can understand what’s happening in the fields and make decisions on how to best manage the crop for the rest of the season. Technology like Drone Deploy can help us cover more ground and get a better assessment of our crops as we make those decisions.
We went out to a field we were worried about and found some early cold stressed areas. Populations in those areas were about 8-10% lower than the better parts of the field due to surface crusting. One way we could manage this field differently through the season is to variable rate our nutrients based on the yield potential across the field, now that we know the yield potential is decreased in these areas of the field.
Technology is so cool.
