[AT] list and a Ramble about the change of farming and tractors.

[jtchall at nc.rr.com]

Seeing the need for GPS is pretty easy in my area, affording it is another, 
I know some fairly good sized farmers but am not aware of any of them using 
GPS yet. It is not at all unusual to have spots in the field that are very 
poor producers. It could be blamed on most anything from soil erosion to 
changing soil types. I've got one 5 acre field that ranges from good soil, 
an area flooded by a spring, another area where the soil is kind of a white 
color with some sort of easy to break rock that will hardly even grow weeds, 
to an area that holds water yet you can drive through it. It's hard to turn 
a profit on that field. When taking soil samples I have sometimes targeted 
the larger areas of poor production to see if we could find the answer in 
the results. Once I even soil mapped the fields in about 1 acre blocks. The 
results were quite a shock as you could see nutrient and lime requirements 
change as you went across a field.

John Hall


-----Original Message----- 
From: charlie hill
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 11:52 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] list and a Ramble about the change of farming and 
tractors.


Back to your need for ag gps.  I know another farmer, who retired last year.
He farmed about 5,000
acres of corn, soybeans, potatoes and cabbage. (total acres).  His combines
and tractors were all gps
equipped from the early years of AG GPS.   He had yield monitors on his
combines and at the end of
the year he could map the yield of his fields in much the same way as you
would do a TOPO map.
He would then map his soil samples to match up with the yield maps and his
fertilizer equipment would
selectively adjust fertilizer an lime application to correct the issues he
found on the yield maps.
I would give anything to have farmed in a time when you could do those
things.

Charlie