The economics of autosteer

JR.

Member
Location
Ip21
The one thing that I think has not been fully accounted for is the human element in this calculation - not all decisions are made on cost alone. Take us - 350 acres and we just bought the top notch greenstar tit and screen plus steering wheel and raven smart boom - bonkers decision really as can never financially justify it even if DEFRA paid for a good chunk BUT dad , who is 70 this year, wanted to ease the strain on the system. He can drive as straight as anyone I know and even without markers can get near perfect matching however this does take more concentration than perhaps it used to plus his son is always calling him with excellent new ideas which rather distracts him. The last straw was the jump up to 24m sprayer which was supposed to make life quicker and easier for him but instead left him (and our chap who is mid 30's) struggling with turn on/ off points. FFIS gave us the classic opportunity to spend 60% of something because we were saving 40% and so the Greenstar and raven arrived. Dad drilled the spring wheat on SF1 and kept calling me in the office with irritating new ideas and at the end of the long days was as fresh as a daisy. Spraying has just kicked off again and there is none of the usual anxiety over turn on and if points. So what is the 'value' of making a job easier and more enjoyable? I should add that at certain points in the day he had to return to the Mk1 eyeball due to the wrong sort of tree being within half a mile but these intervals kept him engaged in the job and gave me some peace and quiet.
 

Stoxs

Member
so basically nobody knows how or can be bothered to keep straight naturally and take some pride in their work?

as i thought all along :whistle:

some people just dont listen,

I have never seen drilling anywnere that is as straght as GPS drilling.
I am offf up to norfolk in 2 weeks time and looking forward to typing in a postcode and having a look to see how its done!
Might even take my camera if it`s that good!! ohh and my tape measure ! 12mtr tramlines exactlly!!
 

Stoxs

Member
At last, some decent posts regarding the topic, thankyou @Mdt and @JCfarmer for talking sense and admitting autosteer cannot turn a monkey into a brain surgeon as some people try and convince you it can.

Now await @Stoxs reply that we are all luddites and that autosteer is the golden egg of modern agriculture and that it is a perfect 100% failsafe replacement for any human being, regardless of their skill level.
I think you will find my view is you still need a good operator in the seat to get the best from GPS systems especially if you are using it to its full potential.
there is alot more to GPS than Auto steer, but i think thats for people who are interested!!!!

Signal is not 100% i loose signal under trees and in the shed, not a big deal because i can drive a tractor with or without GPS unlike some!!!

At a guess 97% of the time i have 10db signal minimum so down to around 2-3cms accurate, better than Any man can do !
good enough for me.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
I'm sure that it will grow well. It's just that I doubt that you have a perfectly even seed distribution density, not that it matters in this case for you.

The point that the Luddites don't seem to get is that there are savings to be made in products, time, fuel, labour, stress, parts & productivity from more accurately doing this on a big scale. The scale is needed to justify the expense of all these toys. Where the break even point depends on how inaccurate operations were before GPS, the cost & sophistication of the steering kit & how much you use the gear. For a few acres of oats you can't justify the expense.

John 1594 - what did you say when mobile phones & the internet became popular? I'll bet you said that you had managed perfectly well without before, yet you have clearly learnt to invest in & use at least one of those. Can you live without it/them now? Probably. Would life be as enjoyable or productive without it? Probably not.
 

Pedders

Member
Location
West Sussex
hopefully you can see from the pic below just how straight the ridges are .. would love to hear of any 22 year old fresh from University without a whole heap of tractor driving experience who could drive that straight on undulating hiilly ground without autosteer .... I know our old plougman with 40 + years of experience couldnt although I'm sure John1594 could of course !!
theres no immediate financial saving from having straight ridges of course but it just makes every job from destoning to spraying so much easier plus of course it looks better from the road !
 

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Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
hopefully you can see from the pic below just how straight the ridges are .. would love to hear of any 22 year old fresh from University without a whole heap of tractor driving experience who could drive that straight on undulating hiilly ground without autosteer .... I know our old plougman with 40 + years of experience couldnt although I'm sure John1594 could of course !!
theres no immediate financial saving from having straight ridges of course but it just makes every job from destoning to spraying so much easier plus of course it looks better from the road !


the shortest distance between 2 point is a straight line ? so your straight potato rows are shorter than Johns would be and therefore have less potatoes in them !! that has to hit yield surely ?? :D
 

John 1594

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
well this is my "pathetic" effort, looks a short field (5 acres) as ive used camera and zoomed it in as phone wasnt clear enough, but still pretty damn good for someone with as "poor" experience as ive got.

SANY0037.JPG
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
well this is my "pathetic" effort, looks a short field (5 acres) as ive used camera and zoomed it in as phone wasnt clear enough, but still pretty damn good for someone with as "poor" experience as ive got.

View attachment 3356

It's very straight, you are clearly a skilled man

BUT. I can see 5 rows right of tramline that you are overlapping slightly - I would be upset if my rtk did that ! If you have that same error on every run your tramlines are not 12m apart


But I'm still impressed, I could not do as well without computers helping me that's for sure !
 

Andy26

Moderator
Arable Farmer
Location
Northants
I've only a basic GPS guidance box, but it proved useful today spraying, even though the field had tramlines, some idiot had messed up drilling and one of the tramlines was out by 2m. Watching the coverage map I could clearly see the miss, so was able to do a quick re-jig to sort it out.

So there are many instances where little savings can be made in this instance there could of been a 2m strip of black-grass the whole length of the field (there still might, and some more, if the Atlantis doesn't work well).
 

John 1594

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
It's very straight, you are clearly a skilled man

BUT. I can see 5 rows right of tramline that you are overlapping slightly - I would be upset if my rtk did that ! If you have that same error on every run your tramlines are not 12m apart


But I'm still impressed, I could not do as well without computers helping me that's for sure !

not got much margin when your coulters are only 100cm apart lol, will have to see what my peas look like behing the vaddy, that field is a lot longer!
 

Stoxs

Member
not bad effort there john
Ideal conditions there to keep it straight, try doing it on a hill!
That was a mounted drill also?
trailed drill is a bit different, on a slope in a dust storm and you cant see ya mark!
At the end of the day a good operator can be even better than yours with Auto steer.
At a guess your tramlines would be about 23- 23.5 meter with that sort of overlap. fine on 75 acers, add it up on 7500 acers and you have wasted a shed load of fert and chemical and seed, let alone fuel and time on top! soon adds up to justify the cost of Auto steer. I would say to justify A good GPS system for steering you would need 1000 acers to braek even. If you take into account vari rate spreading and savings there it could come down alot more.

A bad operator with GPS is still a bad operator, a good operator with GPS is even better and can last longer!!!
 

John 1594

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
not bad effort there john
Ideal conditions there to keep it straight, try doing it on a hill!
That was a mounted drill also?
trailed drill is a bit different, on a slope in a dust storm and you cant see ya mark!
At the end of the day a good operator can be even better than yours with Auto steer.
At a guess your tramlines would be about 23- 23.5 meter with that sort of overlap. fine on 75 acers, add it up on 7500 acers and you have wasted a shed load of fert and chemical and seed, let alone fuel and time on top! soon adds up to justify the cost of Auto steer. I would say to justify A good GPS system for steering you would need 1000 acers to braek even. If you take into account vari rate spreading and savings there it could come down alot more.

A bad operator with GPS is still a bad operator, a good operator with GPS is even better and can last longer!!!


Bad guess, try 12m, so if im an inch out each pass, 3m into 12m tramline sequence means im 4", or 1 coulter width out per tramline. Hardly worth bothering about tbh!
 

Robt

Member
Location
Suffolk
However, guessing you went to school and were not brought up by wolves in the forest! 100cm Is a metre! By the looks of that photo you are overlapping by almost a whole row. At 100mm spacing that's 3.97 inches. So call it 3 inches. That's 12 inches per tramline. So that's approx 30cm this making your 12m tramlines 11.7m or if on 24m tramlines , 23.4........
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
not bad effort there john
Ideal conditions there to keep it straight, try doing it on a hill!
That was a mounted drill also?
trailed drill is a bit different, on a slope in a dust storm and you cant see ya mark!
At the end of the day a good operator can be even better than yours with Auto steer.
At a guess your tramlines would be about 23- 23.5 meter with that sort of overlap. fine on 75 acers, add it up on 7500 acers and you have wasted a shed load of fert and chemical and seed, let alone fuel and time on top! soon adds up to justify the cost of Auto steer. I would say to justify A good GPS system for steering you would need 1000 acers to braek even. If you take into account vari rate spreading and savings there it could come down alot more.

A bad operator with GPS is still a bad operator, a good operator with GPS is even better and can last longer!!!

I'm a lot less convinced by precision applications vra etc than I am of auto-steer - I have tried most things vra but am yet to see a financial benefit of anything

I do see environmental benefits however but a lot of the rest of it is tech for techs sake in many case I think

I remain open minded however and will continue to try new things . I'm sure vra will become useful one day so wouldn't want to get left behind !

Auto steer is the biggest step forward agriculture has made in the last 25years IMO and it will lead to the driverless tractor at commercial farm level on many units within the next decade I think bringing real savings and efficiencies
 

John 1594

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
to be fair i couldnt give a sh!t about the overlap, im more worried about the blackgrass what appering this end, as long as the crops clean and looks well, and passes its malting spec, sod the coulter overlap, thats the best "hand steered" drilling round here by a long shot, especially with neighbours 4m skylark plots next door where his drill hasnt cogged in with the gps screen, 4m squares along both headlands of a 40 acre field. Thats efficient lol

like i said, will see what the peas come up like behind the vaderstat with someone elses marker settings

And keep hollering about how good GPS is, you have more chance of knitting fog than convincing a sceptic like me
 

Robt

Member
Location
Suffolk
If your neighbour has a consistent 4m sky lark plot. It's down to poor operator of said GPS. When you see consistency it's always down to bad settings. So to disagree John , you can't put some numpty in the seat.
Ps love the way you boast about how accurate you are yet when faced with the facts of overlap you then say you don't care it's not accurate! ....... Ever thought about a career in politics!
Ps, would love to have a beer with you as I'm sure we'd get along, disagree yes, but get along would be guaranteed !
 

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