From every pass in the field to every turn at the end of each row, every move made in Illinois farmer Heath Huisinga’s farm field is done hands-free each spring.
“That’s what I think really makes this great is that you can do all this, and you can focus more on just watching the planter,” says the Casey, Ill. farmer as he was rushing to finish planting a field last week before it rained.
Hints of automation are sprinkled across his farm, and at just 30 years old, Huisinga continues to fully embrace technology as it’s introduced.
One of the latest things he’s started using across all his acres is AutoTrac Turn Automation. It’s a feature that automatically completes turns and manages the implement a farmer is using by tapping into field and headland boundaries as the reference point. It’s available on newer John Deere equipment, but the majority of farmers aren’t using it yet, even if it’s available on their tractor. One reason is it requires time to set accurate boundaries in each field.
Huisinga says it took him a week straight this winter of driving around his fields to create the boundaries for AutoTrac Turn Automation. With the advice of his local Deere dealer, he used the left front tire of his Gator as a guide to set up the field, and he says it’s paying off this spring.
“Half the time, I’ll just sit sideways in here, and I don’t have to worry about turning,” Huisinga says from the cab of his tractor, as he navigates the field without any hands on the wheel. “I know if I have an obstacle coming up, it’ll tell me and I can just sit here, and I don’t have to worry about picking it up.”
Like other farmers, the view from his office each spring is the inside of his cab, but a glimpse inside Huisinga’s cab gives a hint into how immersed he is in the technology available in the tractor and on the planter.
“I can watch my [planting] pops; I can watch my ground contact, I can watch all that good stuff. So, it just frees me up to focus more on the actual planter itself than just focusing on driving the tractor,” says Huisinga.
The Illinois farmer is fluent in ag tech, but for him, grasping the latest technology is something that simply comes naturally. Admittedly, part of that is due to his age, but it’s also an area of interest he’s gravitated toward.
“I grew up with that stuff,” he says. “Now, there are so many different things to watch and see. I don’t know how you would do it following your marker track and staying straight.”
Modern conveniences have opened a new realm of realities for Husinga, even if some of those you can’t necessarily quantify with a true ROI. He says AutoTrac Turn Automation is just one example.
“It just frees you up to actually a) take advantage of the tech you do have and b) the operator strain at the end of the day is so much less by not having to constantly watch everything,” says Huisinga.
Early Adopter
Huisinga doesn’t view himself as an early adopter of technology on his farm; instead, it’ just a critical piece of his daily operation.
“Some of the things that we do a little different is we’re quick to embrace new theories. For right or for wrong,” says the Illinois farmer. “Sometimes when we go in on something, we go whole hog, but we’re always tinkering, always trying something. We’re just embracing the unknown,” he adds.
Farming on the edge of innovation, is seen as risky by some, but for Huisinga, it’s become the norm.
“The big jump that most people talk about is auto steer and AutoTrac. I mean, that really did change the game, but I feel like a lot of people are just stuck at that point,” he says. “That technology opened up the door for so many other things. I think that as you embrace more of that, if you want to be in the autonomy space, and you want to utilize that, I’m going to guess that having all the other things lined up and calibrated, and actually having the data behind it, is probably going to expedite your entry into that realm [of automation].”
Farming by the Row and a Wild Hair
Instead of looking at an entire farm field, he’s focused pass by pass and row by row. RTK and other systems are helping him replicate what he does in a field year after year, which he says has really helped him hone in on farming by the row and being precise in each furrow.
“Then it opens up my mind to the possibility of when it comes to fertilizer and the options, I’m not building up the whole field. I’m building up that strip, because with the tech and the accuracy, I know whenever I plant year after year, I’m not going to farm this 30 inches in between. I’m farming in that seed bed, right there.”
As Huisinga can better manage every pass, from the seed to the fertilizer, he’s growing more precise in how he farms. This young farmer is still willing to push the boundaries and try new things.
“Actually, just over here on this 40 [acres], I had this wild hair,” says Huisinga. “I had read this report that guys were doing skip-row corn. And I thought, ‘You know what, we’re going to make this work.’ So, I think I planted two rows, turned one off, planted two rows, turned one off, planted two rows, turned one off, and did that all the way across the field. But I also wanted to adjust my population so that it was the same 35,000 across the planter. And luckily, with Deere, I went in there and figured out how to shut the rows off, up certain rows and lower the other ones. So that was great. I was planting 45,000 to 50,000 on those two rows and then skipping one row.”
He says that one trial turned into a lot of questions from those passing by the field.
“We actually had some commercial guys spraying in the field next to it call and say, ‘Hey, I think you had a problem with your planter. You might want to go fix that.’ I said, ‘That was on purpose.’”
It may have been a wild idea, but it was one that actually worked.
“It made like five more bushel [per acre] than the test, but I haven’t given up on it. I think it was maybe the wrong hybrid that I tried with it. So, we’re probably going to try that again,” says Huisinga.
Coming Soon to a Field Near You: Autonomy with Tillage
With hints of automation already in his field, the biggest change on the horizon could be the ability for Huisinga to do more with less. That includes autonomy with tillage, where Huisinga thinks he can start using smaller and narrower tillage tools that run autonomously behind his combine at harvest.
“Even in the fall for us, sometimes you have good falls, sometimes you have bad. And if you can just even have an autonomous tractor follow you around in the combine and tell it, ‘I want these corn stalks dug, and I’m in this big block of area,’ I can watch the thing work over there, and I can basically have all my stalks worked and ready for next spring by the time I park the combine.”
Embrace the Technology
Technology may be racing forward in agriculture but for this maverick, he has one piece of advice for fellow farmers across the U.S.
“Embrace the tech. I think it can be daunting at first to get set up and say, ‘I don’t know if I can do that or I don’t have time,’ but take the time to do it. Work with your dealer or whoever you’re working with to get your tech, because I think it will open the door to other things you did not think that you could do, or things that wouldn’t be possible without that tech.”
By embracing the technology, Huisnga says your comfort level will grow with experience. But just like with other things in life, the hardest part is often starting something new.
