Expert provides step-by-step walk through of Case IH’s farm management software
By Ryan Ridley
Farms.com
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to use Case IH’s AFS Connect?
The farm management software allows growers to monitor and manage its fleet, farm and data.
Kirk Wesley took attendees of the 2020 Farms.com Precision Agriculture Conference & Ag Technology Showcase on a virtual test drive of AFS Connect. Wesley is AFS Marketing Manager, Off-Board for Case IH North America.
At the farm level, AFS Connect allows farmers to organize fields and applications, gain agronomic insights and share relevant data with partners.
“Your data is yours,” adds Wesley. “We’re not sharing this with anyone else – you’ve got access to [the data] and you control who gets to visualize it.”
At the fleet level, AFS Connect allows farmers to easily “monitor equipment and logistics to achieve peak performance” and provides in-depth analysis of machine data.
Wesley also notes that Case IH recently rolled out a new feature allowing farmers to view its machinery fleet within the field portal.
After creating field boundaries, the software automatically (within the United States) generates a map showing all soil types within those set boundaries.
Under the Field View tab, farmers can view seeding populations, application rates and yield data from information gathered from monitors. This allows farmers to make data-driven agronomic decisions by overlaying yield data onto field maps.
So, what kind of data can be brought into AFS Connect?
- CaseIH/NewHolland/Steyr (CN1)
- John Deere (RCD/Gen4)
- ISO 11783 (XML)
- Trimble (AgGPS)
- Field Boundaries (SHP zip)
- 3rd Party Data
- Harvest Loads/Protein (CSV)
- Gatekeeper (XML)
“One of the costliest parts of data management is just converting data from one format that you may have had in the past to the current format,” explains Wesley. “That’s one of the powerful tools that we have in [AFS Connect] is being able to utilize all of that information easily.”
The portal also has a reporting setting that automatically generates reports that can be shared with various partners of the organization.
The reports, using herbicide application as an example, includes the following information:
- Rates of how it was spread across the field via map and graph
- Summary of activities including when spraying started and when it ended, field size, acres applied, equipment and operator information, etc.
- Tank mix information
To learn more about AFS Connect, watch the below step-by-step walk through with Wesley.
Photo: caseih.com