A dealer’s hands-on experience leads to improvements in farming

Based in North Gower, Ontario, GPS Ontario is a company that has been pioneering the precision ag industry since the year 2000. As a one-stop shop for precision ag, GPS Ontario works closely with farmers to help drive productivity and record data systems. Co-owner Jordan Wallace goes beyond the role of the dealer in working with other farmers. He farms over 300 acres as the farmer-in-residence at the Ottawa Smart Farm in the Area X.O Futureplex where he tests new technology to help farmers understand the limitations and benefits of the feature sets.

Problem

In the summer of 2022, eastern Canada experienced a series of outages from telecommunication service, impacting farming with the disruption of cellular service. The outages left farmers in a difficult position during their planting season in June 2022, with limited to no access to correction data.

Solution

Jordan used his own farming experience as a method for bringing successful new approaches to his clients. With delays due to disrupted cellular service, he began exploring other options for his own farming needs as well as for his customers.

Consistent and accurate corrections service reaps success

For the past eight years, Jordan has used the same A/B and guidance line patterns for his farming operations. Following the disruption in cellular service, Jordan decided to use Trimble CenterPoint® RTX Fast for his guidance lines. Trimble CenterPoint RTX provides high-accuracy GPS agriculture corrections via satellite or cellular delivery, providing access to corrections data regardless of network service disruptions. With a new corrections service, Jordan anticipated a shift from the previous years. He was happily surprised, “I couldn’t believe it. The guidance lines did not shift or move. They’re in exactly the same spot as they were last year. I was expecting to have to shift my guidance lines to where I was parked or even set a new line.”

Once Jordan began using Trimble CenterPoint RTX Fast with his own farming efforts, he quickly shared the benefits with his clients. The renewal rate on the signals has been impressive.

Jordan shares the positive feedback from his farming clients, “We’re seeing a 95 percent to 9 percent renewal rate, regardless of where I am on the farm, from areas of hills, or near the tree-line, the system continues to deliver the accuracy I need."

All the growers that have made the switch to the GFX-1060 display and the NAV-900 controller bundle have been impressed by how quickly the system works and how reliable the signal is.”

Returning to a more relaxed farming experience

Jordan’s move to Trimble CenterPoint RTX, and the ease with which that change was made, has eliminated his concern for the year-to-year accuracy on his farm. “Regardless of where I am on the farm, from areas of hills, or near the treeline, the system continues to deliver the accuracy I need,” Jordan comments. With CenterPoint RTX, he can return to a time where it’s possible to farm with ease once again.

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