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A new product from Precision Planting
allows farmers to see monitor product
flow and potential blockages in real time.
Using
DICKEY-john
sensors that many farmers are
already using, and a
Gen 3 20|20
monitor,
Clarity
allows growers to visualize product flow and
distribution.
“Clarity gives growers row-by-row details of their
granular product,” said
Shawn Livingston
, Precision
Planting’s eastern Canada regional manager. “And
that’s whether it’s on a strip-till, air seeder, box drill or
corn planter using granular fertilizer.”
An important point Livingston wants farmers to
understand is the difference between metering a
product and delivering a product.
Metering refers to a shaft going around, and product
flowing through that meter. Delivery to the rows
happens after that.
“They’re two different monitoring systems,” he said.
“If a shaft is going around has a speed sensor on it,
that’s saying the system is applying product no matter
what. What Clarity is doing is confirming that because
the shaft is going around, there’s still product flowing
through that shaft.”
Showing row-by-row flow is a change from other
available products.
Other similar products
only showed whether the
equipment had flow or not,
but wasn’t able to determine
if flow levels changed.
Clarity can provide more specific data.
“Because of the way it reads the signals and interprets
the data coming back, Clarity gets high level
information,” Livingston said. “Having data numbers
to look at helps farmers see problems as they happen
and allows them to act quickly to fix those issues.”
In addition to providing row mapping, Clarity can
identify changes in:
•
Product Magnitude
– the amount of product
flowing through the sensors,
•
Product Uniformity
– which shows how even the
system is delivering the product to each row, and
•
Product Deviation
– which displays how each
row compares to the average amount of product
being applied.
Having this detailed information available to a
producer can help him or her ensure crops receive the
best chance to succeed.
“If you think about wheat seed, most of it that goes
down in the fall is being blended through the meters
with seed and fertilizer,” Livington said. “What
happens if the fertilizer plugs and we’re getting seed
but no fertilizer? As a grower, if I plant five acres with
a system that’s telling me I have flow but only one of
my products is flowing, I have a yield loss right
away.”
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PROVIDING FARMERS “CLARITY” WHEN IT
COMES TO FLOWMONITORING
Precision Planting’s latest product helps producers gain
more visibility into seeding and fertilizer applications
DIEGO FLAMMINI
FARMS.COM
“HAVING DATA NUMBERS TO LOOK AT
HELPS FARMERS SEE PROBLEMS AS
THEY HAPPEN AND ALLOWS THEM TO
ACT QUICKLY TO FIX THOSE ISSUES.”
PHOTO: zhaojiankang/iStock/Getty Images Plus