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 another gem from "not always right" 
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 Post subject: Re: another gem from "not always right"
PostPosted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 1:32 pm 
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White Horseradish wrote:
340PD wrote:
"Agricultural Electronics"...I'm in the IT field and that is a concept I don't even want to understand. :shock:

Heh. That was kinda how we felt at work when we found out that a customer of ours made "manure injectors"

One engineer that I am acquainted with, on a trip to a chicken processing plant, encountered a chicken beheading machine called... <drum roll>... the SUREKILL 2000! :roll:

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 Post subject: Re: another gem from "not always right"
PostPosted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 1:36 pm 
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ironbear wrote:
White Horseradish wrote:
340PD wrote:
"Agricultural Electronics"...I'm in the IT field and that is a concept I don't even want to understand. :shock:

Heh. That was kinda how we felt at work when we found out that a customer of ours made "manure injectors"

One engineer that I am acquainted with, on a trip to a chicken processing plant, encountered a chicken beheading machine called... <drum roll>... the SUREKILL 2000! :roll:

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 Post subject: Re: another gem from "not always right"
PostPosted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:29 pm 
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Agriculture, at least in America has come a long ways in the last few decades. Most new tractors are loaded with electronics. Regulation about Nitrogen runoff and ground water pollution by agricultural chemicals have caused many of these changes. The high prices of agricultural fertilizers and chemicals has helped this trend too.

For example say you have a piece of land that you are planning to grow corn on; the first thing you would do is run a gridded soil sample (with each location marked with GPS coordinates) to check the levels of nitrogen, potash, etc needed at each location. When you plant the corn, you would be using the GPS system in the tractor to plant that corn (maintaining row spacing, etc). You would also be using a Planter monitor to regulate the population (seeds per acre) of that corn. Later when you side-dress with Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3), you would be using a microprocessor controlled NH3 delivery system that that would allow you to precisely regulate the number of pounds per acre. These systems which use a radar sensor for speed readings, are also hooked into the GPS system and will vary the NH3 delivery automatically depending on your earlier grid sampling. Even later when you spray the corn for weeds, you will use a sprayer monitor that will maintain your sprayers rate (in gallons per acre) regardless of changes in your groundspeed. Finally, when you harvest that corn, your combine will monitor the yield in bushels per acre. All these system can use GPS coordinates and you can then match the yield for a particular spot to your grid sample to determine next years fertilizer requirements. All these system can exist independantly or can be tied together to maximize the yield per acre and to minimize wasting fertilizer and weedicides/pesticides. This system of targeted fertilizer and chemical application helps prevent runoff and groundwater contamination. Hence my comment in an earlier post about American farmers being good stewards of the land. The comment that was sneered at by some members here who apparently don't have any knowledge or the understanding of agriculture today.

Of course there are many small farmers who do it the old way but the vast majority of larger farmers have no choice but to use these electronic items or they wouldn't be able to compete. Keep in mind that I have been out of the field for almost 10 years and don't know anything about the advances in the last few years. The chicken de-gutters and beheaders are old school. They have been around since the late 70's or early 80's

There are many IT guys on this forum that have horror stories about calls from users. Try and talk an old farmer through setup and calibration of a computerized system when he doesn't even own a PC. Most of the time, you're talking a foreign language to them. The hardest thing to do is not laugh out loud when they are trying to tell you about their attempts to fix a malfunctioning system, especially when the only tools that they have with them are a crescent wrench and a hammer. There are very few standards and many of these systems don't interface with each other well. It's like the old days in personal computers when you had many processor manufacturers, incompatible network systems and a multitude of operating systems.

I work in IT now and let me tell you, dealing with PC users, PLC's and networks is child's play compared to what I went through when I worked in Ag. :)


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