Farming smarter with technology
The National Fieldays is an annual fixture in the farming calendar: it draws in thousands of farmers, contractors, and industry professionals from across the country.
In addition, farmers are dealing with variable climate conditions that impact water accessibility – some regions having more than enough rainfall while others are more prone to drought. Increasingly, they are looking to precision ag technologies to be more efficient in how they manage and deploy natural resources, including water use.
Land-forming is an often-under-utilised strategy that can deliver value by enabling the use of water more efficiently, to positively impact return on investment (ROI) via increased crop yield and reduced irrigation costs.
PTx Trimble’s recently launched water solution, WM-FieldForm, enables farmers to control the movement of water onto, off and within fields. The solution moves land-forming capability into GFX Series Displays by utilising the Precision-IQ software platform and offers much of the same functionality of FieldLevel II with a new feel, improved visualisation and enhanced tools and features.
From a simple topsoil levelling project, right through to complex multi-plane land-forming, grading, levelling or terracing projects, the system offers optimised water distribution. For those with excess moisture, this might mean reduced erosion and nutrient leaching or yield-loss prevention from ponding. For those in drought prone regions, optimised water distribution offers reduced moisture run-off and improved management of expensive irrigation water.
Typically, in the first year after land-forming, users report an increase of up to 30% in crop yields, greater positioning accuracy through top-of-the- line GNSS corrections and more uptime to get the work done quicker.
By simplifying every stage of the process, including design, execution and verification, WM-FieldForm enables farmers to form and/or maintain fields on their own, removing the need to hire contractors to manage such projects, offering cost savings on labour resources.
As part of PTx Trimble’s commitment to a retrofit-first, mixed-fleet strategy, WM-FieldForm integrates with the GFX-1260 display and the NAV-900 guidance controller. Users simply need to add a NAV-900 and hydraulic machine controls to a bucket scraper to achieve greater positioning accuracy and more uptime to get the work done faster. Learn more at www.ptxtrimble.com.
