New! Improved!

I finally finished transferring all our ‘precision ag’ data from a program called Summit to another called SMS [1].

Summit was a splendid program, very easy to use, but if you wanted to do something that wasn’t part of its easy to use features, it was impossible. But more to the point, Summit was a 3rd party product. The data we used it to display came from another manufacturer, Ag Leader, and Summit could never quite keep up with the improvements and changes that Ag Leader was making.

So we switched to SMS, the desktop precision ag software made by Ag Leader. SMS is a splendid program too, very flexible and it can do practically anything. But I have a master’s degree in computer science, 25 years experience in programming, 15 years experience in farming, have been to a training class for SMS, and still the learning curve for SMS has been steep, long, and brutal.

What is all this ‘precision ag’ data? We have GPS receivers on our equipment, and as we plant, fertilize, and harvest what we are doing at each point in the field is recorded. Then we can display that on a map and determine that what we planted and fertilized at each point in the field resulted in this yield.

Despite having made my living programming computers for 25 years, I’m deeply skeptical of computers and their value and potential. But this is powerful stuff.

1. SMS stands for nothing less than “Spatial Management System”. I’ve been having a great time using their system to manage my spaces.