Thinking Outside the Box to Implement Precision Tech in Challenging Fields

I got my first taste of precision ag in the desert the other week during my visit with Jake Nordenberg, who works as a precision specialist for 24-store John Deere dealer Stotz Equipment in Buckeye, Ariz. It was interesting to see how creative Nordenberg and his team are when it comes to helping farmers use precision technology in unique environments. 

“A lot of Deere’s technology is tailored more towards the Midwest. They don’t have borders (on their fields in the Midwest). Every 90 feet we have a border through a field. We run into obstacles. We have to get creative. One of the ways we did it, like with See & Spray, they don’t have anything for hay yet. We take this DJI mapping drone, and we fly it, we use Pix4D to stitch everything together. Once we stitch it, we have these high-resolution pictures of the field, and we can pinpoint where the weed pressure is. We can mark those up and make a target application map and send that to the ground rig. When the ground rig goes over those, it will just hit where those weeds are from the map. So, that’s one way of getting a little bit creative down here on how to implement technology.”