Tech your planter with one of these great deals! 
Take advantage of this competitive trade-in program, per row discount and get special low-rate financing on SureDrive® and SureForce® systems. 

The trade-in program gives growers a lot of flexibility while allowing them to upgrade their planter to our newest technology,” says North American Direct of Sales, Sean Ealy. “We only ask for the module to be traded in, and in return growers can choose to use their legacy display elsewhere on the farm or work with their dealer to find a home for some of their viable older system parts.

Don’t have a trade-in? No problem, there’s a separate offer for you! Until August 31, 2019 all SureDrive and SureForce purchases automatically have $100 taken off per row, or $150 off per row when you install both systems. 

Learn more about these great offers here. 

At Ag Leader, we understand our employees are the heart of our company, and the personalities our customers and dealers interact with every day. Take some time to meet our team. These are the people who make our company great, and help bring cutting-edge precision technology to the marketplace.

Tell us the basics

Hi! My name is Sarah Spotts, I work in the Accounting department here at Ag Leader, more specifically, I am responsible for Accounts Payable. I am originally from Dows, Iowa but I have lived in Ames the last 17 years. 

Tell us about your work 

My main responsibilities are for Accounts Payable for the company. I make sure the bills are paid for the company and I also manage the company credit cards. Additionally, I also process the Iowa Use Tax. 

What is your favorite part of your job?

The favorite part of my job is working with our employees and suppliers to make sure all our expenses are paid properly.

What is your favorite part about working at Ag Leader? 

My favorite part about working at Ag Leader are the co-workers and family atmosphere.

Tell us about yourself

 

Outside of work I enjoy watching Iowa State Cyclone sports especially football and basketball. I also enjoy listening to music and going to concerts. Country music is my favorite! The food I enjoy the most are nachos and my best and most memorable travel destination is Nashville. The latest books I’ve read were various titles by Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. I would definitely recommend them if you are looking for a positive and uplifting read.

Stay tuned for more Meet the Team employee features! Be sure to check out our other blog content here.

If it hasn’t by now, soon it will be time to turn to another field operation, spraying. We have an application control system, DirectCommand, that helps make applying easier and more accurate. The following list is a good starting point for getting your machine field ready. Remember, safety first! Make sure you have an adequate supply of gloves, goggles, particle masks and chemical jump suits before proceeding. 

Mechanical Inspection

• Clean or replace tank and boom sprayers as needed.
• Inspect hoses, clamps and fittings for wear or leaks. Repair or replace as needed.
• Test nozzle flow rate and compare to new. Replace any tip that has 10% or greater error from new nozzle flow rate. If two or more nozzles fail, replace the whole set.
• Inspect boom suspension and general mechanical condition, repair as needed. Automated boom height control can’t perform well if boom mechanicals are worn.
• Inspect the flow meter – clean, test or replace as needed. 

Electronic Inspection

• Inspect cable for corroded connectors and physical damage. Pay extra attention to possible pinch points like drawbar and boom fold areas.
• Calibrate ground speed sensor for backup GPS speed source.
• Be sure your flow meter cal number is correct. 
• Test flow meter, boom and flow control valves for proper operation by adding water to the tank and placing the Ag Leader display into “Rate not Responding.” You may want to create and load a test field for this procedure in order to prevent garbage data. Calibrate or repair as needed.

Don’t forget to enter your tip information!

Advanced Troubleshooting 

• How to Test a Control Valve
• How to Test a Boom Valve
• How to Test a Flow Meter

Reference Guides

• InCommand DirectCommand ISOBUS Liquid
• InCommand DirectCommand Liquid
• InCommand all operations including Direct Injections, OptRx, NORAC, etc.
• Ag Leader® Integra/Versa all operations including DirectCommand, ISOBUS, OptRx, NORAC, etc.

A common question here at Ag Leader – customers want to know which specific device is best for running SMS™ Mobile.

SMS Mobile is Ag Leader’s mobile software for capturing site-specific information such as finding or recording soil sampling core sites, running boundaries, crop scouting, navigation to a site and more.

SMS Mobile installs on pretty much any device running Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7, Windows 8 (not RT) or Windows 10. With that amount of versaility, the device options are quite wide – thus the reason customers want some direction to narrow it down. 

We have the laid out the device basics here but this blog will delve deeper into some specific devices that are working well for our customer. 

We do not have an official stand or answer on this but here are some suggestions as a starting point. Some of the ones that our Support team mention are:

• Juniper Systems Mesa 2 (Ruggedized and durable, albeit expensive)
• Microsoft Surface Pro (commonly used, readily available)
• Panasonic Toughbook (commonly used, readily available)
• Acer Tablet (affordable if concerns are about cost, low replacement, cost. Readily available)
• Any laptop or tablet with a full Windows operating system (commonly used, readily available, versatile)

As far as getting GPS to the device, many high-end devices will have a sufficient quality internal receiver, otherwise we recommend using an external receiver via Bluetooth or an external ag-grade GPS receiver using a USB to 9-pin serial connector. Information about setting up these types of receivers can be found here. 

Additionally, great information about using SMS Mobile can be found here.

It’s that time of year. Sprayers are getting tuned up and ready to head out to the fields (if they aren’t already). The time, equipment, seed and soil preparation work invested earlier this spring is now beginning to pay off with a (hopefully) healthy crop at its most critical growth stage. It’s amazing how much of your crop’s yield potential is tied up into this very short time period when so many factors – weather, insects and weeds – can have such a big impact on your yield and profitability in the fall.

Even more amazing is how much more complex this stage has become over just the past few years. For example, think back not that long ago – talk about weeds with glyphosate resistance was just a rumble in a few pockets of the country. Today, it’s a reality in most of the high-production corn and soybean regions. That means we’ve all had to re-educate ourselves on herbicides and tank mix formulations that have seemed old-school.

It also means technology plays a more important role in helping you monitor the health of your growing crops and deciding where and how much to apply. For example, crop scouting will require better accuracy in the field with the ability to note specific weed issues in certain areas of the field without damaging crops by over or under applying inputs. Accurate record keeping becomes more important for both reporting and analysis.

Ag Leader has always been about developing technologies to help farmers maximize the return on their investment – not just your investment in our products, but also your investment in equipment, inputs and time. My challenge to you is, while you’re in your fields this summer, ask yourself: do you have the tools to help you determine what your crops need and apply precisely where it’s needed to get the most out of your fields?

If the answer is no or you are unsure, we’d like the chance to help you. More than likely, spending just a little time visiting our website or talking to an Ag Leader dealer will be an investment well worth your time.

At Ag Leader, we understand our employees are the heart of our company, and the personalities our customers and dealers interact with every day. Take some time to meet our team. These are the people who make our company great, and help bring cutting-edge precision technology to the marketplace.

Tell us the basics

Tell us about your work

As a Senior Training Specialist, I am responsible for facilitating instructor-led training, including SMS software training and dealer training, creating and updating content and online courses, working with other departments to reach company goals, and developing strategies for Ag Leader training initiatives.

What is your favorite part of your job?

My favorite part of my job is helping growers discover the story behind their data to help improve their operations. What impact did a management decision have on your yield? What can we do next season to increase production and reduce inputs? Information collected in the field can tell a story that can have great benefits to an operation and I like helping growers discover that story.

What is your favorite part about working at Ag Leader?

My favorite part of working at Ag Leader is the people. From my co-workers to dealers to growers, I love learning from their experiences and having conversations. It’s easy to talk to them and have fun!

Tell us about yourself

Outside of work I like gardening, working on our 100 year old house, and spending time with family and friends. Rhubarb bars are my favorite food. Lately, I’ve done a lot of travelling for training this last year. Some of my favorite spots were Memphis, Tenneesse, California, and New England. The last book I read was Preparing for the 2019 International Certified Crop Adviser Exam. Just a little light reading, haha!

Stay tuned for more Meet the Team employee features! Be sure to check out our other blog content here.

Recently, Field Agronomist Barry Anderson traveled to Europe to meet with Ag Leader EMEA staff Paul Rose and Sergey Ryzhov. They toured agronomy trials locations in the Ukraine and in Italy. Here’s what they saw in Italy:

It is a random selection as the trial itself has not yet been planted! They are waiting to chop the grass for silage and then plant the trials. It is normal in Italy to have two plantings, the first of which has now been done with longer season varieties. The second planting will take place anytime now with shorter season varieties which is when the trials will be done.

Above is a field summary map of another field that had varying soil types and clearly shows uplift being used. This field also had a very even emergence, though we did not visit as it was 40km away from where we were.

At Ag Leader, we understand our employees are the heart of our company, and the personalities our customers and dealers interact with every day. Take some time to meet our team. These are the people who make our company great, and help bring cutting-edge precision technology to the marketplace.

Tell us the basics

Hi, my name is Renee Van Marel and I work in the Accounting department here at Ag Leader. I’ve been here a little over 2 years now and I call Forest City my hometown. I’ve lived in Ames 34 years now, though and I’ve been living in the same house for 28 years.

Tell us about your work

My main responsibilities are processing invoices to send out and applying payments for dealer accounts. I field phone calls and manage email questions from dealers regarding invoices and payments. I have a lot of similar tasks each day and yet each day is different, which I enjoy.

I would say the favorite part of my job would be helping to solve problems big and small for our dealers and having a positive outcome. 

My favorite part about working at Ag Leader is I enjoy the people that work here and our customers that I interact with. Ag Leader is an outstanding company to work for.

Tell us about yourself

Woodhall Growers are part of the G’s Growers group who are one of the largest vegetable and salad growers in the UK. Most of their operations are based in the fens of Cambridgeshire but the company founder, Guy Shropshire, started out in Newport, Shropshire where they now grow organic crops.

Today, Woodhall Growers farm about 500ha, growing a mixture of organic produce including spring barley, spring oats, red beet, spring onions as well as some conventional crops including 100ha of conventional spring onions, winter wheat, early potatoes and beetroot. This is all managed by Will Woodhall who has been with the company for 10 years.

Will has been an Ag Leader user for 2 years, having previously used New Holland OEM guidance systems. I asked Will what his reasons were for choosing Ag Leader:

“Because we lease our tractors every two years, I never know what colour we will be driving, so Ag Leader is a complete stand-alone item that can be easily fitted to any make of tractor. I had worked closely with Carl on the New Holland guidance system for some years and it just so happened that he had moved across to Ag Leader. Back up support is everything in my eyes and I knew I would get great service with the guys at RVT Precision Ag”.

Massey Ferguson fitted with DualTrac for ridging in front of de-stoners.

Woodhall Growers also farm across a wide area (up to 95 miles apart) so it was also very beneficial to move across to RTK via NTRIP as this provided the accuracy and flexibility needed for their operation. They are currently running two SteerCommand® systems and one SteerCommand with DualTrac™ system, all with InCommand 1200 displays using DisplayCast® and are connected via AgFiniti®, which has been a huge benefit to this operation as Will describes:

“For the veg crop we bedform with the DualTrac and then sync to the AgFiniti system. The AB line is then shared with the drill tractor which then drills exactly square on the bed. This has enabled us to drive our camera guided garford hoes 15% faster and also hoe without the camera.

Also this year, we have had all the cereal land soil mapped for variable rate drilling. I am able to complete the maps in the office and send them out through AgFiniti to the lads working in the fields which saves a lot of time. We can also drill with one tractor on the Monday then pick up where he finished with another’s tractor on the Tuesday, which has added a flexibility to my operation moving operators and tractors from one job to another. Not all of my operators are trained on every operations (skilled tractor drivers are getting hard to get hold of) but all the lads can now use the Ag Leader system”.

Will believes there are still more opportunities with AgFiniti and also has plans to add VRA to other areas of his operation as time allows. He sums up farming very well with his final statement: “…never a dull moment…!”