Right now, a lot of row crop growers are doing their most important planning without a notepad. They’re doing it from the seat of a combine or cotton picker, from the cab of a truck running loads to the gin or elevator, or from the office as the yield numbers come in. Harvest is when the whole season shows itself. You can see where the stand was strong and where it thinned out, where a field got too much and where it got too little, and which passes were right on the row and which weren’t. Every grower who has ridden through a field at harvest knows that feeling of thinking, “Next year, I’m going to fix that.”
That thought is where next season really starts. From now through the end of February, growers are deciding what to keep, what to change, and what to add before the next crop goes in. After that, the planters are rolling again and the window closes. Brian Kelley, President of AgTechnologies, calls it one of the best parts of the year: “It’s an exciting time of year that we get the opportunity to help navigate their next season as farmers are finishing this one and seeing how it went.”
Better doesn’t always mean new
When growers picture fixing what they saw at harvest, they often picture new equipment. Sometimes that’s the right call. But very often, the improvement you need can be added to equipment already parked in your shop. As Brian likes to put it, “Your new planter is already in your shop.”
That applies across the whole life of the crop. “From pre-planting to planting to growing the crop to harvesting it,” Brian says, “as you’re evaluating all stages of that crop development and where you can be better or do something different, we have something for each one of those parts of the life cycle of your crop.” Here’s what that can look like.
It starts with guidance. If you saw rows that wandered or passes that overlapped, a guidance system keeps every pass straight down the row and right over the furrow, so the planter is where it’s supposed to be every time. From there, the planter itself can be upgraded for better depth control and singulation, so every seed goes in at the right spacing and the right depth. An uneven stand you noticed at harvest often traces back to what happened at planting.
The weak and strong spots you watched go by from the cab are exactly what variable rate technology is for. Instead of treating every acre the same, you can manage nutrients by zone, putting more where the crop can use it and less where it was wasted. And on the spraying side, AgTechnologies can help tailor nearly any sprayer to your operation, whether it’s custom-built, pull-behind, three-point or self-propelled. “That’s from just controlling flow to making your application more precise,” Brian says, including pulse width modulation systems that hold rate and droplet size steady as speed changes.
Add us to the conversation
Most growers already have a planning routine. You sit down with your agronomist, your seed and chemical reps, and the people who run your operation, and you work through what went right and what didn’t. Brian’s ask is simple: “As you’re talking to your agronomists, make sure you’re also talking to us.” The agronomy plan tells you what the crop needs. The technology plan makes sure your equipment can actually deliver it.
Those conversations are already happening. Growers are calling us right now as they finish harvest, thinking through what they’d do differently and what’s worth building on. If something you saw from the cab this fall is still on your mind, let’s talk through it now, while there’s still time to have it ready before the planters roll.
Ready to start planning next season? Contact AgTechnologies to talk through what you saw at harvest and what you’d like to change.
