Connected Fields

The Operations Center also serves as the central location for customers to connect to their machines and their fields. Over the past 12 months, a large number of innovative features have been added to the Operations Center. With that, customers always have solid business information on hand - even if their fields are further apart, or their farm has small fields scattered over a large area. A live Location History enables customers to follow machines almost in real-time, e.g. to route support vehicles to the exact location or to track the work progress during the day. Leveraging the Location History calendar, customers can even go back in time and check where the machines have been working within the past 60 days.

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The very heart of the Operations Center is an electronic field map. Customers can upload new field boundaries and all fields are visible and accessible on the map with just a few clicks. With a new set-up tool, managers can pre-populate important parameters to ensure error-free documentation. The set-up files can either be sent wirelessly to a machine or uploaded in the traditional way with an USB stick. Thus, it closes the documentation cycle by delivering an integrated and seamless approach for set-up creation and file transfer.

Moreover, a color-coding indicates what has been the last operation on a specific field, once documentation data have been uploaded. With that, it is easy to keep track of work status and to make sure all fields are sprayed or fertilized. The Operations Center will also deliver an electronic crop history with yield and application maps - not only for documentation data recorded on John Deere GreenStar 2600 and 2630 displays but also data coming from non-John Deere displays. Soon the Operations Center will also allow exchange and conversion of guidance lines from several other automated guidance providers.

If customers want to transmit agronomic information to their partners for further insights and support, share field boundaries with a contractor or certain maps with an agronomist, it can be done online. Once access rights and levels are determined by the customer, data can be easily shared through the Operations Center. Access levels are now even that granular that access may be restricted to a certain number of fields or just one field to make sure only the information which definitely needs to be visible to other parties is shared.

Presented as concept at the 2013 Agritechnica for the first time, the John Deere Manure Sensing application serves as an ideal example of how information enabled agriculture can mutually serve contractors and arable farmers within the value chain of crop production. Supported by near-infrared sensor (NIR) technology (same as model year 2016 or newer SPFH HarvestLab sensor - providing contractors a dual use case), manure sensing records relevant manure nutrient levels such as Nitrogen (N), Ammonium-N, Phosphate (P), Potassium (K) and dry matter 17 times per second and allows a targeted and precise distribution in the field. Different from other systems John Deere Manure Sensing can measure on-the-go and close to the applicator which ensures accurate fertilization and takes into account the heterogeneous nature of nutrients of liquid manure. Ingredients can be applied based on a target rate for one nutrient (i.e. nitrogen) and a limit rate for a second ingredient (i.e. phosphate). Also the application rate per square meter can be controlled with a combination of tractor speed automation (if used with compatible John Deere tractor) and flow rate control ensuring rapid reaction and a wider adjustable range to changing operating conditions and without affecting the distribution quality across the applicator boom width.

Having measured and documented the ingredient application of N-P-K, the contractor can process an application map for an individual field and provide the data to his customer via the internet based Operations Center.

Customers can then leverage the nutrient maps to calculate site-specific amounts of mineral fertilizer needed to achieve the nutrient target levels. John Deere also plans to add a prescription creator which enables customers to turn the data directly into a prescription map that can be wirelessly sent to a tractor for execution. Customers also have the possibility to create prescription maps with their farm management desktop software or potentially leveraging a FarmSight dealer service.

The open system architecture will allow desktop software providers to develop communication interfaces that will connect to the Operations Center and which ultimately will allow automated data synchronization all the way from the GreenStar 2630 as well as other compatible displays into the Operations Center and the desktop software and vice versa.

For all three new solution packages and as part of a John Deere FarmSight dealer service offering, the local John Deere dealer can assist the customer with the basic system setup e.g. pre-loading all machines and available field information into the system and connecting him to his/her partners, so customers can get started with the Operations Center right-away. Select John Deere dealers can also support the customer with more advanced services such as prescription map creation and thus help the customer to better address the overall nutrient management.

Over the course of the next months and years a further series of interesting features will be made available, more partners will be on-boarded, ultimately delivering an exciting customer experience and value add to their daily operations.