GPS technology gives farmers an edge

helps farmers produce their best ARTICLE AND PHOTOS BY ALICE KEMP

Jay Hundley, left, and Ian Watkins use GPS to map cornfields on Cloverfield Farms in Essex County.

The world is becoming increasingly high-tech as industries adopt new technology to meet demand and improve their efficiency—and farming is no exception.

In the age of precision agriculture, Global Positioning System technology is enabling farmers to make the most of their time and money.

When you ask about Virginia farmers who use GPS, the name Hundley comes up—a lot.

Since 2008, the Hundley family has invested heavily in technology to help maximize their operation at Cloverfield Farms in Essex County. They raise corn, soybeans and small grains on around 8,000 acres, and GPS plays a part “in pretty much every aspect of it,” said Jay Hundley, Essex County Farm Bureau president.

“It goes from steering to yield monitoring, section control, variablerate planting, variable-rate fertilizing,” he said.

Using GPS, Hundley maps specific zones in his fields. Soil, fertilizer and yield data he’s collected over the years is compiled and analyzed by precision software, which shows him the highest- and lowest-performing zones.

Ian Watkins, one of Hundley’s employees, said this allows them to determine the best way to plant the individual zones—concentrating their efforts to reduce overages and save on cost.

“If there’s a spot over here that’s only going to produce 100 bushels an acre, you plant and fertilize for 100 bushels,” Watkins explained. “But if this spot over here is doing 300, you plant and fertilize it for 250.”

Hundley and Watkins said customization also can be applied to planting different seed varieties. On a

Hundley points out areas in a field with varying pH levels, as indicated by GPS.

corn planter, Hundley said, he can put two seed varieties in one hopper. Using GPS, the machine knows which variety to plant and where.

“As it goes through the fields, it hits this zone and this variety will plant,” he said. “Then it’ll hit another zone that you want another variety to be in, and it’ll automatically switch to plant that one.”

He added that he’s trying to maximize the return on every acre.

“We started with one foot in,” said Grayson Kirby of Creamfield Farm in Hanover County. “We started with our toe on the edge of the water, just to make sure it would work.”

Over the past decade, Kirby has grown his family’s part-time farm into a full-fledged operation— cultivating about 4,000 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and other grains in nine counties. He said while most equipment already comes with GPS platforms, buying machines with variable rate controllers and the corresponding precision software is an expensive commitment. Kirby and his family made the leap in 2015—allowing them to utilize GPS much more effectively.

“Since then, we’re 100% in, and it’s really showing good returns,” Kirby said.

Before fully using GPS technology, Kirby said it was difficult to specifically determine which rows needed fertilizer. “You were always going to overlap a little bit because of the different sections. Now with GPS, it recognizes when it’s overlapping, and it then cuts off the sections.”

And the technology has gone a step further. “They’ve taken it down to nozzles on sprayers so individual nozzles will cut off. Each of them has their own controller, and you get even more precise.

“You can put your money where it counts and then save it where it doesn’t,” he added.

On Cloverfield Farm, Watkins uses autosteer, which utilizes GPS to guide equipment in a straight line in the field. “It takes a lot of fatigue off the operators,” he said. “Especially running the bigger planters and combines where you’re constantly leaning out, looking at stuff, turning around, doing this, doing that.”

Instead of having to focus on keeping the machine driving in a straight line, the driver is free to monitor the machine and make sure things are working properly.

GPS and precision ag technology also come with an environmental benefit regarding fertilizer application. Before this technology, Kirby said, “there were places where you were overapplying, and when you

overapply, the plant doesn’t use it, and then it runs off.

“So, it’s another feather in the cap. We’re not only doing good things for ourselves, we’re doing better things for the environment.”

In addition to reducing fatigue, autosteer allows farmers to work fields later in the evening—a benefit during the fall when it gets darker earlier—or in low visibility.

“I’ve run in dusty conditions where we couldn’t even see the header, we didn’t even know where we were going,” Hundley said. “You put the autosteer on, and it’ll track you back down the field. You kind of know where you’re at in the field while watching the map.”

Grayson Kirby said he’s used GPS on Creamfield Farm in Hanover County since 2015. The precision technology allows him to see the population, yield and fertilizer rates for specific rows.