Integrated Machinery and Soil Management With Autosteer - Ultimate Control By Bill Casady

Autosteer is rapidly becoming a popular accessory on field equipment, touting benefits such as eliminating skip rows, running day and night, and minimizing skips and overlaps when applying crop protection materials. Autosteer can even reduce other capital costs by eliminating the need for foam markers on sprayers and disk markers on wide planters.

Throughout the last century, steering equipment through the field has been a primary operator task. Some operators have an uncanny ability to steer their way through the field with precision, but the task of steering is sometimes at the expense of controlling the performance of the implement behind the tractor or the operating characteristics of the combine, sprayer or planter. At the very least, autosteer reduces operator fatigue and increases operator productivity.

Already, high-end autosteer units are available that can guide implements through the field achieving accuracies within an inch. The opportunities are limited only by imagination. Avoid traveling over wet areas of a field while planting or spraying the rest of the field when it is ready. Return later when the ground is ready and finish up without damaging the soil. Automatically start and stop spraying or planting precisely at the beginning and the end of the field to reduce overlap and waste and with confidence that no area of the field has been missed.

Precision agriculture over the last decade or so has meant that the soil could be planted, fertilized, sprayed and generally cared for by using prescriptions based on location and previously collected data. Advanced autosteer with subinch accuracy truly provides precision in placement of the equipment within an inch of the intended rows or soil area not only in parallel passes, but consistently from spring to fall and from year to year.

When paired with equipment that has been set up on the same wheelbase and swath width, precision guidance provides another dimension of accuracy that offers an opportunity of its own - namely, controlled traffic.

Controlled traffic eliminates random traffic patterns in a field that cause widespread compaction. Without some visual or electronic means of controlling exactly where a tractor will travel within a field, the spacing of successive passes becomes random. Over a period of several years, nearly all of the soil will have been exposed to wheel traffic that can cause productivity-limiting compaction.

Controlled traffic can be accomplished without precision steering, especially when permanent soil beds or furrows are prepared for irrigation or to help warm the soil. The system of beds and furrows become the ‘white lines’ marking the permanent pathways through the field.

Controlled traffic provides unsurpassed control over compaction. Combined with continuous conservation practices that allow the soil to reach a long-term no-till condition, the increases in productivity and energy efficiency are very likely to become a new standard for competing in a tight agricultural industry.

Bill Casady
573-882-4370