GrainsWest Fall 2019

Tech 2019 Grains West 38 APP ROUND UP Nathan Stamp In charge of farm operations, he and his family run Stamp Seeds seed farm near Enchant. It is largely under irrigation. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE APP? John Deere MyOperations and FieldNET. We also use Seed Trackr for seed sales bookings, seed processing traceability and inventory management and TSheets for employee record keeping and management with integration to QuickBooks. HOW DOES JOHN DEERE MYOPERATIONS SERVE YOUR NEEDS? It allows our operators—sprayer, seeder, combine—to enter field-specific tasks. It records rates applied, acres seeded and more. This is transmitted to the cloud where our financial controller and I can review it. WHAT ARE MYOPERATIONS’ BEST FEATURES? The ability to know details and the exact amount of product used in a specific field or seed plot. This information is easily extracted for crop insurance records, crop inspection maps and records and to track costs per plot and field. HOW DOES FIELDNET SERVE YOUR NEEDS? Irrigation pivots can be remotely controlled and monitored from my phone. Our fields are spread out, so not having to drive to each while irrigating has saved an extra person’s job plus fuel. The pumps that supply water to the pivots can be controlled remotely. WHAT ARE ITS BEST FEATURES? The ability to plan 24 hours ahead. It helps you plan for in-crop spraying and to quickly see how long until it’s off. Being able to line a pivot up at certain degrees before getting to the field to seed, spray or harvest saves driving over crop to get to the pivot centre to operate it manually. FARMER APPROVED Grain farmers applaud their top digital tools We asked Alberta farmers to tell us about their favourite and most-used smartphone farm apps. While some of our respondents regularly utilize farming apps, others use non-ag apps for farming purposes. BY IAN DOIG