The 2020 agricultural season has already begun, and it’s clear it fell in difficult, turbulent times. It’s worth noting the work of agricultural producers, who, despite everything, keep providing the population with fresh, healthy food. Safety and well-being need to be looked after, while also keeping in mind that Trimble’s positioning services are always there to help. You can be confident in the reliable work of Trimble’s services and support specialists, since they’ll come to your aid any time of day or night.
Trimble’s positioning services — a pioneering company in its field with more than 20 years of experience — provide positioning based on GNSS satellite and mobile-network signals for high-precision agricultural operations. Trimble’s positioning services for high-precision agriculture work in any season, on the most challenging types of terrain, and with the vast majority of tractors. Regardless of the exact work you’re doing — land preparation, cultivation, planting, spraying or harvesting — Trimble offers services delivering precision levels from centimeter-scale to less than a meter.
Trimble helps farmers, year after year, stay on the optimal path of travel across every field. This level of repeatable precision reduces the cost of materials, soil compaction and crop damage, boosting the profitability of your farming operation.
You can see this for yourself in concrete examples.
A row-crop farmer cuts downtime and expands coverage areas
Brandon Hunt grows row crops such as corn, wheat and soybean on 10,000 acres. He’d used an RTK system (that is, a base station) for years, but started to notice that in some areas — particularly under trees or in bad weather — the service didn’t always work. When RTK base-station problems piled up, hours and even days of downtime with no ability to work would result.
This eventually pushed him to switch from the RTK system to the Trimble CenterPoint® RTX satellite correction service, which gives farmers access to all the benefits of modern technology even in remote areas. Applying the navigation system for Trimble TMX-2050 True Tracker units with active steered hitches turned out to be a much simpler matter. The new system also made it possible to apply guidance on the planter for cover crops, planting such crops down the middle of the strip.
After switching to the new system, Brandon got the ability to sow larger areas and increase crop coverage, as well as significantly cut downtime. After registering with the Trimble CenterPoint RTX service, Brandon noticed that the guidance platform delivers the greatest benefits on corn planters, even given the uneven terrain of his land, which in the past had significantly complicated the task of staying on the guide line. After adding Trimble CenterPoint RTX, the farmer noted an increase in his own productivity, and that the conditions he and his hired workers operate in became less stressful — since they no longer need to manage an RTK base station, and the coverage area has grown.
«The Trimble RTX system has made my life much simpler, since the operations I perform every day have become simpler», says Brandon. With Trimble RTX equipment installed on planters, sprayers and combines, it’s also become much easier to operate them, since workers no longer have to deal with the difficulties tied to signal weakening or loss.
A wheat producer’s approach to maximizing working time and moisture
Working across more than 20 fields ranging from 12 to 320 acres, wheat producer Pete Verploegen was looking for a better solution for spraying his fields. His difficulties arose not from spraying inaccuracy, but from the imprecision of the tractor’s wheels as it moved across the field. Even starting on the same A-B lines each time, the sprayer would deviate from the desired path by anywhere from 15 to 30 cm each time. After several passes across the field, this imprecision led to the formation of wheel ruts up to 7.5 m wide, where wheat stubble was flattened and, as a result, unable to hold snow. This caused uneven moistening of the crop — some areas stayed covered in meltwater for a long time, while others, conversely, dried out, after which the soil was blown away by wind.
Additional difficulties arose when Pete switched to a trailed sprayer with a 132-foot boom. With such a long boom, it was hard to see its end while maneuvering among power-line poles and fences, often in low light at dawn or dusk.
After consulting with a local dealer, Pete decided it was time to give up WAAS corrections and switch to a more reliable, more precise system. He started using a Trimble CFX-750™ GNSS receiver and display with the CenterPoint RTX correction service. The precise coordinates of the A-B lines, fences and power-line poles for every field were mapped.
Instead of depending on the need to set up a base station and a radio signal that can be unstable, Pete now simply gets in the tractor and switches on the CFX-750 display. The display automatically connects to the CenterPoint RTX system via satellite (it can also connect via cellular network) and, within minutes, delivers the ability to make repeatable passes with an accuracy of up to 1 inch (2.5 cm), year after year.
Now Pete heads out to his fields knowing his tractor will pull the sprayer and carefully guide the boom along the boundaries he’s set. He pulls up the field on the CFX-750 display’s screen, finds the A-B lines for that field in his notebook, and lets the tractor and sprayer go, moving exactly where he’s pointed them. In these last several years, regardless of the time of day, the equipment clearly moves row by row, without touching fences and going around power-line poles. The high-precision approach to vehicle movement Pete has implemented saves him time and leaves the snow on the fields right where it should be — and ultimately delivers a higher yield per acre.
The system always works — and always accurately
As these first-person accounts show, you can be confident in the reliable operation of Trimble’s networks and work without interruptions yourself. You’ll also save even more time by eliminating the need to move a local base station from one field to another, or change network IDs. The system will work in every corner of your farm, no matter where you are.
About Trimble RTX
Trimble RTX technology uses data from a global network of reference stations to calculate high-precision positioning based on satellite orbits and time data. Trimble RTX applies a suite of real-time correction services, delivering, within just a minute, various levels of precision — from less than two centimeters to less than a meter. Trimble RTX-based positioning services work through a convenient, readily available satellite system, or through an IP/mobile network, giving users various options for high-precision positioning in almost any working environment. Trimble RTX correction services are available across most countries of the world.
About Trimble
Trimble is changing how the world is built, by offering products and services that connect the physical and digital worlds. Core technologies in positioning, modeling, connectivity and data analytics give users the ability to boost the productivity, quality, safety and sustainability of their operations. Trimble’s software and hardware products and services — from targeted products to enterprise lifecycle-management solutions — are transforming the way work gets done across a range of industries, such as agriculture, construction, geospatial navigation, transportation and logistics.
For reference: The agricultural division of the American company Trimble Inc. (Trimble Agriculture division) offers solutions for complex technical challenges in agriculture. Trimble’s solutions cover every aspect of modern farm management — from automatic machinery and equipment control systems and application-rate control, to sharing up-to-date data between the office and field displays, and creating tasks and prescription maps both on a PC and in a cloud service.
