Page 223 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

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When Ryan came into the business in 1997, he started pushing for new technology. Don recognized the signs. “You get to a point where you think, I’ve done enough for now. I’m going to back off. But then the next generation comes along and starts pushing for change. And that’s what keeps you in business. Because if you’re not willing to move forward, you get left behind. That’s what happened to a lot of farms around here.”
When it was time to buy a new tractor in 2005, Ryan did his research. He got quotes from several equip- ment dealers and went in search of the laser-leveling technology he’d been reading about. “I wanted to see it working firsthand, so I went down to Laser Man in California and drove around on their equipment.” What grabbed his attention was the Trimble guidance systems. “I came back and lobbied for GPS,” says Ryan. “It was $28,000 for a new system. But that’s what we needed.”
Don wasn’t so sure. “He was trying to sell me on a $28,000 piece of equipment to guide this tractor down the field when I was used to buying a brand-new tractor with everything for $14,000. And this was just for the guidance system.” Ryan’s astute research landed them a new Challenger 585B with a Trimble navigation system for the price of a new Case tractor alone. “To me, that was a real benefit,” says Ryan. “It was our first piece of GPS. And it was the first GPS in this area, even before the fertilizer companies.” Since then, they’ve gone all in with Trimble products. “At first we bought it just for the auto steer. But we’ve slowly taken it into our spraying with Field IQ because it gives us rate control.”
According to Wavra, “The unique thing about agriculture is that farmers work the same fields year-in and year-out, whereas in construction, no job is ever the same. The farmer knows exactly how much fertilizer he uses from year to year. Now put a GPS system on his tractor, and he doesn’t have to do overlap on his rows anymore because the system controls it according to the prescription map he made of his field. And if he needs more in one area and less in another, it will automatically administer the fertilizer at variable rate sprays. So that farmer can see his return on investment right there in the field because he knows exactly how much fertilizer he bought.”
Today, the Boyles do all their own spraying and fertilizing because it gives them more control. “It costs around $1,000 per acre to farm in this area,”says Ryan.“So we have to do everything we can to be efficient and cost-ef- fective to get the kind of return we want.”
They also bought Trimble’s Farm Works
software, a record-keeping and mapping program. And in 2014, they hired a full- time employee to manage all their GPS- based software and write the prescription maps for their fields. “All this technology makes us more efficient and productive,” says Ryan. “Now we are integrated into precision farming with grid samples and prescription rates so we get exact amounts of fertilizer and sprays across our fields with no overlap. It gives us a yield advan- tage because I know exactly what’s being applied. And I can do it exactly when and how I want to.”
Boyle’s RoGator Sprayer
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