Small Improvements Can Mean Big Rewards on the Farm

Everyday improvement was the overall theme of the 2025 Precision Planting Winter Conference held in late January in Tremont, Illinois, and live streamed to 10 locations across the United States and Canada.

“For a lot of years, this event has been about how you prepare for the next year, how you can get better for the upcoming season,” said Bryce Baker, Precision Planting product and brand manager. “How do we improve on our farms for 2025 and how do we understand your questions and serve you better for this coming year?”

Planter Improvement

“Nobody on planet Earth has done more research on singulation than Precision Planting,” said Mike Schlitt, Precision Planting regional manager. “For every 1% I can improve my singulation, that’s a two- to four-bushel gain.”

He said at planter clinics it’s not uncommon to see meters running at 92% or 95%, highlighting the importance of checking performance prior to planting. 

“I like to call every row unit a planter,” he said. “If I have a 16-row planter, I have 16 planters, because each one has to do its job.”

One component of planting that is sometimes overlooked is depth, but small adjustments can mean a big difference in emergence and, ultimately, yield.

Adjusting planting depth based on the moisture line throughout a field increases even emergence. Precision Planting’s SmartDepth tool allows adjustments from the cab in increments of one-tenth of an inch and can be paired with SmartFirmer to sense available moisture, allowing for informed decisions on optimal depth. 

“Once you see the value in changing your depth, you can’t do it enough,” Schlitt said. “We’ve just given you the “easy button” to set your minimum and maximum depth, and our tools can do the rest.”

Sprayer Improvement

When it comes to spraying, the ability to apply the right amount of product exactly where needed is essential both for the environment and for your bottom line. 

“If we can variable rate, we can put a high rate on the big weeds, give them the full punch of your program, and then on the small or sparse weeds we can use a low rate because they don’t need as much for control,” said Aaron Herrmann, Precision Planting research agronomist. 

Preventing weed escapes at the end of the year is important when you consider how prolific many common weeds are at producing seed. 

“I’ve dug pretty deep into waterhemp and I’ve come up with figures from around 28,000–160,000 viable seeds produced by a single female plant each year,” Hermann said. “What happens to all those seeds? With 17 waterhemp per acre, times an average of 50,000 seeds per plant, you have 850,000 seeds per acre. 

“Even at only a 25% germination rate, and 99.98% weed control, you’ll end up with 42 waterhemp per acre the next year, along with all of their seed plus any other viable seed from the year before.”

The SymphonyNozzle system allows for independent control of rate and pressure of each nozzle on the sprayer. Adding the newly released NozzleSplitter allows for even more precise control of each nozzle by splitting each one into two smaller nozzles. 

SymphonyVision adds cameras every 10 feet along the sprayer boom and automatically adjusts spray rate based on weed severity. SymphonyVision Spot adds spot spraying capability by turning nozzles on and off as needed, with cameras spaced 5 feet apart.

Fertility Improvement

Understanding your soils allows you to make better decisions throughout the growing season. Radicle Agronomics is Precision Planting’s suite of soil sampling and analysis tools to aid in the fertilizer recommendation process. 

Using GeoTubes — water-resistant, reusable soil sample containers — GeoPress packages and records soil sample data automatically. At the winter conference, the GeoPress Lite was introduced.

“The GeoPress Lite has a smaller footprint to allow for more options and configurations,” said Adam Vaccari, Precision Planting product engineer. “It’s a more cost-effective way to get on the platform.” 

The GeoTubes are then loaded into a Radicle Lab, where the soil is analyzed with results sent to an app you can access from your phone or other device. The tubes are then sterilized and can be reused.