Last month, John Deere launched a new precision application, AutoPath. According to John Mishler, tactical marketing manager, it’s a tool to help farmers easily manage guidance lines during the crop year.
“It reduces potential crop damage by helping keep sprayer wheels between the rows and off the crop,” he said. “It makes harvest easier in down crop conditions and really eliminates the need to count rows or search for wide-narrow guess rows when opening new lands during harvest.”
So how does it work? Mishler said it’s an application that collects geospatial planted row data exactly where rows are planted.
“That data is then streamed to John Deere Operations Center,” said Mishler. “It is available through the balance of the crop year. When a sprayer pulls into the field, it has that information available so it knows exactly where the rows are and creates a guidance plan on the fly for the whole field.”
The same is true for harvest.
“The combine is now smarter because of previous in-field passes,” said Mishler. “It knows where the planted crop rows are and can better guide that combine through the field by opening new land and throughout the field.”
Mishler said John Deere has also spent a lot of time improving Gen4 Machine Sync and expanded its use to more crops and machine types.
“Self-propelled forage harvesters—we can now also coordinate the position of that commodity cart, either on the left or right side or behind that self-propelled forage harvester and keep those in sync so that we make sure that feed goes in the wagon and not on the ground.”
If you’re interested in AutoPath or other precision software, contact your local John Deere dealer.