Seed corn farmer Joe Hartung, Arena, WI, was tired of chasing down vehicle operators to give them the latest field boundaries, guidance lines, and coverage maps stored on one of many compact flash cards from Hartung Bros. Farm. “We have to go into a field three times just to plant it, so we needed a way to share the same A-B lines to keep us on the planted rows,” Hartung explains.

He says operators always ran the risk of losing or switching the memory cards, and they needed to check the cards frequently to make sure they had the latest version. So Hartung, along with farm manager Don Bennett, decided to be the first to upgrade to a wireless system offered by Trimble called the Connected Farm launched earlier this year. This data management system allows them to store all geo-referenced data on a Web-based server and wirelessly send the data between the crop field and farm office. Now all field information is kept in a central place and can be accessed from any computer to ensure all 15 employees have the most up-to-date information.