On-Farm Experience: Luke from Arkansas
EQUIPMENT: John Deere S780 combine, with a John Deere 800R application system configured with a 4600 series monitor.
We demoed VRAFY on 612 acres of corn. After seeing how efficient it was for us time wise to take our soil maps and generate prescriptions for fertility, we decided to enroll the entire farm, including all the rice and soybeans. It’s minutes compared to several hours in front of the computer. On our previous program, we would have to either pay a fee for every application or run every soil point through a formula on Excel. If we’re busy and I have to be on a combine or in a tractor or in a truck, I can’t be sitting in front of a computer figuring out crop removal rates.
VRAFY does all that. We run everything through John Deere Operations Center, and it’s fast. I can do it through my phone or jump on the laptop and send it to the floater in less than 10 minutes. It’s increased my efficiency ten-fold, so I love it.
We’re also saving on fertilizer. Where we have been kind of a shot in the dark on potash, we are now seeing we have well overapplied in a lot of areas, especially when you see crop removal based on our yields.
Even in the high-yielding fields, we were higher than we needed to be and were creating salinity issues from the amount of potash we were applying. In some areas, we went from applying 300 pounds of potash to 100, so that’s pretty significant. That’s $40 to $60 per acre right there.
On top of what we’re able to do with fertility, there’s also the NDVI and standard vegetative index. One thing I have noticed is it shows how good you are at watering efficiency. Or with diseases like white mold, you can go out and make an application based off what you see, and in dry areas you can go out and spot treat fungicide.
Finally, the support staff is absolutely wonderful. Every time I call, my issue gets resolved, and I learn something new every time I talk to them. The VRAFY platform is undersold, and in combination with John Deere Ops Center, it’s a game changer for what we’re trying to accomplish. I really like the program, and it’s well worth it.
