Page 225 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

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Before their GPS-guided Challenger, they did everything manually, which netted out to about five acres planted a day. “We thought we were doing really good,” says Ryan. “Now we can plant sixty to seventy acres a day. And it runs twenty-four hours, for night work. All you really have to do is make the turn at the end of each pass. It’s all programmed so anyone can do it.”That has freed up both Don and Ryan to get off the tractor and onto other things. That first rental turned into others, which morphed into a growing relationship between Peterson and Boyle Family Farms. Today, they own a good-sized fleet of AGCO and Cat equipment—all backed by Peterson and SITECH support.
Precision Irrigation (or Prescriptive Irrigation) is the next big step for the Boyles. “We only get about seven or eight inches of annual rain here. And you can’t grow anything without water, so water is a huge issue. It’s one of the biggest challenges in agriculture today.” In 2001 to 2016, farmers across Peterson’s territory were cut back to 75 percent of their water rations because of the continuing drought. And it could get worse, which has ramped up irrigation technology in the industry. “Trimble now has Irrigate IQ to help manage water better,” says Wavra. “We can make water usage smarter by using pivot irrigation and a prescription map of a farmer’s field. The technology pulses the sprinkler on a pivot line to turn it down or off completely, depending on the soil type and texture and the crop requirement. You can put a system on each sprinkler that will vary the rate of application, just like we’re doing with fertilizer. And you can monitor it from your phone. It’s pretty high- tech stuff.”
Smart water technology isn’t necessarily drought-driven, according to Wavra. But it’s become more prevalent because of the droughts that often plague the West. “There’s not necessarily a technology yet that’s marketable for a lot of industries in California like vineyards and orchards,” says Wavra. “We need drip-irrigation tech- nology. That’s what we’re pushing for.”
(L-R) Eric Wavra/SITECH Precision Ag salesman with Ryan Boyle in December 2020
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