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John Deere’s new generation StarFire 6000 satellite receiver has been designed to set new standards in operational accuracy and signal uptime, while also improving the connectivity of machines using the John Deere FarmSight range of precision farming solutions.

The receiver will be making its UK show debut at CropTec on the East of England Showground, Peterborough in November, alongside a number of new developments linked to the Operations Centre in MyJohnDeere.com, the company’s dedicated precision farming website portal. The MyJobsConnect Premium service includes MyJobsManager and MyLogistics apps for farm, contract and fleet managers, and a MyJobs app for operators.

MyJohnDeere.com allows farmers and contractors to manage their land and machinery fleet from a central location. After logging onto your own secure site, you are able to allocate equipment to specific tasks, track the work progress of the machines and adjust work orders to match actual weather conditions, while operators can check their work schedules more easily.

As the successor to the StarFire 3000 receiver, the StarFire 6000 features an improved antenna and the latest in global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signal processing technology. A new optional locking device for better theft protection is also available.

Russian GLONASS satellite compatibility and the proven integrated terrain compensation module (TCM) remain as standard. In addition, the new receiver is available with an improved, free SF1 correction signal (+/-15cm, reduced from 23cm), an all-new SF3 signal with +/-3cm pass to pass accuracy and a number of major RTK (+/-2.5cm) innovations.

The StarFire 6000 features a new ‘triple StarFire accuracy’ mode, which now tracks three geostationary satellites in parallel instead of one. This provides three times more signal stability in shady conditions and the potential to switch to a back-up satellite 80 per cent more quickly than the previous model.

Acquisition of the new SF3 correction signal is also three to four times quicker, so users spend less time waiting for the receiver to achieve full accuracy and can get high-precision jobs started even faster.

With in-season repeatability up to nine months, the SF3 signal can be relied on to prevent guidance line drift when operating in long fields, skipping passes or when using AutoTrac for multiple jobs throughout the growing season. Examples include the creation of AutoTrac guidance lines during drilling and planting, and the use of the same lines to complete subsequent jobs such as fertilising, post-emergence spraying and harvesting.

RTK customers can now benefit from a longer RTK Extend mode of up to 14 days. If the line of sight to the base station or the mobile network connection is lost, users can maintain full accuracy and repeatability for up to two weeks, even outside the RTK network.

A new John Deere 4G LTE mobile RTK modem with two high performance antennae not only supports the latest 4G LTE (long-term evolution) mobile communication standard, but also continues to support 3G and 2G standards to provide the best possible network coverage and signal stability.

Customers also have a free choice of SIM card and correction signal provider. Being entirely self-contained, the complete StarFire receiver system can easily be moved from machine to machine in less than a minute.

The new, highly advanced John Deere mobile RTK signal is compatible not only with the John Deere 4G LTE mobile RTK modem but also with the JDLink modular telematics gateway (MTG) controller. With this uniquely integrated solution, customers don’t need to invest in a separate modem and SIM card with a data plan. The whole system is provided from one source, making it easy to buy, set up and service.

All of this new technology adds up to improved performance and uptime as well as lower operating costs, when paired with FarmSight precision farming systems such as AutoTrac automatic steering and John Deere Section Control for sprayers and spreaders.

CropTec 2016:

Want to find out more from John Deere and test drive their R4040i sprayer, make sure to visit their stand 171 at CropTec 2016.

In addition to the free advice on offer in CropTec’s topical and technical seminars, there will be numerous exhibitors you can talk to find ideas, inspiration and answers on everything from crop protection and nutrition to plant breeding and soil management in one place, at one time.

CropTec is FREE for those who pre-book tickets. You MUST pre-register here to ensure you receive your free ticket.

All visitors will charged £15 on the gate on the day of the event.

Biog: Andrew Ward farms 730ha of arable land near Leadenham, Lincs. He grows wheat, spring barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape. He was awarded his MBE for Forage Aid in 2014 which he launched in April 2013 to gather up donated forage and straw to help farmers in the north and west during times of snow and flood. He is Chairman of the AHDB RL oilseeds committee, is an Agrii i-Farm trials site and a graduate of the IAgrM Leadership Development Programme. Andrew believes in strong partnerships with suppliers to farming, which include Agrii, AHDB, BASF, Bayer, Clydesdale Bank, GrowHow, Househam Sprayers, Monsanto, NIAB-TAG, Simba Great Plains and Syngenta. He is a McDonald’s Flagship Farm, has hosted two Cereal Events, won Farmers Weekly Arable Farmer of the Year, NFU/Farmers Weekly’s Farming Champion for helping snow-struck farmers and Farmers Guardian Farming Hero award for his part in the Somerset floods response team.

Three things: Cracking crops, blackgrass banished, tough market

Four years ago I made the tough decision to do everything I could to get on top of blackgrass. It was so bad that it had made my wheat totally unviable – wheat yields were halved, or worse, where blackgrass was really bad; plus herbicide costs were huge and their effectiveness was poor because of resistance. So I’ve evolved from all winter-cropping to 40% spring barley, 25% wheat, 30% oilseed rape and the rest sugar beet.

Any patch of blackgrass was sprayed out with RoundUp – with the growing crop, to stop it from shedding its seed. In year one we sprayed out 170acres, year two it was around 150 acres, year three it was down to 65 acres, year four 23acres and this year there were only three patches the size of two tennis courts each. Last season the only blackgrass herbicides I used were RoundUp and Crystal or Liberator pre-em.

I’ve also spent £36/acre on hand rogueing the blackgrass – 21 Easter Europeans in three teams. They’ve walked 1100 acres. It’s been very labour intensive and it’s taken a lot of supervision by me, but it’s meant that we’ve got down to almost nil blackgrass on the farm after four years.

What I’ve come to see is that it’s a fallacy to say that a) you can’t grow spring barley on heavy land; and b) that you have to have wheat in the rotation to be profitable. If you’ve got blackgrass, the returns from spring barley are much, much better.

But I know that I need to keep on top of the blackgrass it’s a viscious triffid of a plant, and I’m very expectant that it will evolve and start to become an issue in other ways, for example germinating later, or even in the spring.

So I’ve started working with Agrii on cover crops in earnest to improve the soil structure. We are trialling five different crop mixtures this year. We’ll spray RoundUp before we drill, then we will compare killing off half pre-Christmas and half pre spring barley drilling and see what works best from the combination of approaches and mixes.

Minimal disturbance is the name of the game for establishment – we’ve adapted and developed our own direct sowing kit and cultivate everything after the combine – including the spring barley ground.

Yields have been cracking this year, the spring barley has averaged 10.2t/ha compared with 9.2t/ha last year.

Variety-wise, I’ll be drilling Skyfall, Reflection, Revelation and Evolution this coming season, and I’ll be drilling Skyfall onto the poorer heath ground – where it’s yielded 4.2t/acre this year. The variety seems to do really well on poorer ground. I always delay drilling to allow for as many stale seedbeds as I can. Oilseed rape varieties for next season will be V316OL and V324OL.

Looking ahead with prices where they are and ongoing market volatility, I’m going to be looking very seriously at machinery costs. I’m not sure how farmers can justify kit like the Cross Slot drill at £220k unless they get rid of every other piece of equipment apart from a spray and a set of Cambridge Rolls. I’m going to be looking into a second-hand John Deere drill next year as a way of keeping costs low.

Good GPS kit is – and will remain – invaluable. And it needs to be the good kit that’s down to a couple of centimetre accuracy. I use RTK GPS and I’ve worked out that using it has saved me 26ha in spraying overlaps every time we spray. From a cost and an environmental point of view – this is hugely valuable.

If I was to ask R&D manufacturers what us farmers need next, I’d say more work on direct drilling and minimal soil disturbance – particularly on heavy land; and a way of applying slug pellets at the same time. We also need more collaborative work on cultural control options – not just of weeds.

CropTec 2015

Want to find out more about how to tackle blackgrass, the latest technology & innovation, precision farming and research and development in the arable sector? make sure you visitCropTec on Tuesday 24th & Wednesday 25th November, East of England Showground, Peterborough.

To encourage knowledge exchange among the British farming community further, this year’s event is FREE for farmers to attend. You MUST pre-register online to ensure you receive your free place.

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