Data. Farmers collect a ton of it, but what do they do with all of it?
“A lot of times, we think about just looking at our yield maps and using that to make a decision on what we should purchase for next year,” says Kendal Quandahl, precision field team manager for Case IH in North America. “And that’s a great place to start with your information. That’s really how we’ve used data over the last several decades. It’s look at your yield map, buy seed.”
Quandahl says farmers are collecting so much information, it’s time to start digging into individual pieces of the operation.
“And start to make real time in season decisions around logistics, for example, as well as using that data to plan other kinds of purchases like understanding our total fuel usage on an operation. And when we use more of that, which seasons, and you can start to prepurchase and plan some of that a little bit better than maybe we have in the past.”
Step 1 is to connect your equipment with a cellular modem, and that can be equipped through the factory or via their parts channel to connect equipment that doesn’t come equipped already. Then you’ll be ready to upload data to AFS Connect.
“So, AFS Connect is actually a free platform. Anybody can go create their account there, upload their information that they have on USB sticks in a drawer somewhere, and start to build their repository of information. We’re also working on helping our producers optimize their whole farm from a logistics perspective. So, adding a cellular modem to other pieces of equipment, a semi, a Ranger, pickup truck and being able to see all of that in AFS Connect is a focus that we have as well.”
Learn more about all the data gathered via AFS Connect from Case IH at caseih.com.
