There’s no such thing these days as buying a tractor, or header, or sprayer.
You’re buying machinery, obviously, but in 2022 you’re also buying technology, a digital system, a connection to satellites – and you’re buying an agricultural connectivity that is restructuring broadacre farming.
With the potential to address all farming.
Just ask Haeusler’s Production Systems Manager Jordan Lee, the human face of this cutting-edge approach to not just sowing and harvesting crops but to revolutionising how you and your business partners run your whole business.
Right now their focus is on cropping, but Jordan is in no doubt as the technology continues it onward march it will be easily adapted to – and embraced by – other sectors of the industry, from livestock through to some of the Sunraysia’s signature industries, such as citrus and grapes.
“This is a gamechanger for farming, and the game will keep changing as the digital technology will be improved at an ever-increasing rate because the more we learn about its applications in the field, the more people will want to become part of the journey and the more innovative and exciting that journey will be,” Jordan added.
Today, however, the business is all about the broadacre business and doing it with a strategy he says is based around three pillars and that needs to be comprehended before you even think about splashing out for big-ticket items based on the theory of “this is the machinery we’ve always used”.
Jordan says the Haeusler’s Digital concept is built on collaboration, integration and education.
He says using those as the blueprint for progress, you’ve purchased the best equipment and technology available.
Which also gets you two, not one, experts with which to begin structuring the next phase of your farm management program.
Jordan is the man with the digital data at his fingertips, while Andrew Glare, a veteran of the ag machinery industry for the past three decades, is at the helm of the hardware side of the show.
That means he will advise customers on technical requirements, such as the best screens to install and use, right through to the electrics and installation.
All of which you have to get right to realise the full potential of what Jordan is about to unroll for you.
“Now you’ve got the machinery and the digital equipment, you need to make it work for you, make it really work for you, and to achieve that you have to understand just how wide-ranging the applications of this digital technology truly are,” Jordan explained.
“Our range of dealer services helps you get the most from your investment, we can also train you to use the equipment and technologies, make sure your data is accurate and work with your other trusted advisors to get the best possible result for your business,” he says.
“Haeusler’s is now offering customers a fully customisable suite of solutions and services to suit their every need and they can pick and choose what they need, suggest their own requirements and still pay only for what they want.
“Once producers fully grasp what they are doing – and can do – with this technology they will be able to see exactly what’s happening in their operation right now – and learn to do even more with their performance over time.”
Jordan says Haeusler’s uses monitoring tools to see how your machines are performing and how jobs are progressing, even when you’re not in the cab. He says solutions such as the JDLink™ Connect-enabled location history, Job Monitor (which can give a quick view of your entire operation’s performance), Field Analyser investigates what’s happened/happening in a particular field and you then organise and analyse information your way, in Agronomic Reports.
“By collaborating with the right people and tools to make decisions that save time, optimise yield, and maximise profits you have everyone on your team embracing the total investment you have made with your John Deere machinery from Haeusler’s,” Jordan says.
“It lets you easily share machine and agronomic data with others, by setting permissions that grant the right access to the right people and have everyone working from the one accurate view of your operation, with tools you and your partners can use,” he says.
Jordan has been delivering the digital message at Haeusler’s for the past two years, and says the reason roles such as his have emerged in recent years is simple, he says: “The whole thing has become all too big for one person to handle”.
He says he doesn’t go onto a farm and tell clients what they must do, how they will do it – and when.
“Every generation has got the previous one telling them that,” he laughs. “They hardly need me having a crack as well.
“No, what I do is help. I like to start by talking to the farmer, everyone in his or her family who is involved, their specialist advisors and other business partners.
“First and foremost you need to establish where the business sits today and where everyone sees it going – there is no cookie cutter approach where you can keep rolling out the same solution because every business is so different in its management, its goals, its skill base.
“It’s a bit like being part coach/part advisor and a guiding hand on the client’s digital journey – I listen to them all, try and decipher what all that input means and then show them how all the input from everything they do, and don’t do, in their paddocks also needs to be deciphered, compiled in the one system and used as the basis of all decision moving forward.
“It is a whole new ball game and a farming world where data rules – if you know how to get it all in the one place and one language.”
A language that is also second nature to Jordan – despite the best efforts of his mother to get her son off the land because “I didn’t have you to just sit on a tractor” on the family’s Sea Lake farm.
The family moved to Werribee, a city life the game plan – except, and forgive us if you have heard this one before, but you can take the boy out of the country, you just can’t take the country out of the boy.
Jordan very soon turned back to his agricultural roots, he became a diesel mechanic, studied at Longerenong Agricultural College (where his passion for precision agriculture was crystallised), spent time with another John Deere dealer, Elders as an agronomist and Nutrien Ag and then decided to make the world of precision agriculture his life’s mission, joining Haeusler’s two years ago.
“And one of the best things about that, even though I am working with them to build a digital team, is I still get to be a very hands-on in my role and for me that’s a big plus because I love this work and get a real kick out of seeing it all come together on a client’s property,” he added.
“The other big plus is Haeusler’s approach to spreading the digital message far and wide is our approach is colour blind. Access to our digital service comes with the purchase of some John Deere machinery from us, but it’s no problem what colour your other machinery is, or what language its computers speak, it’s our job to get them speaking the one language so you can maximise all that data it was reveal.
“Right now you can use Agworld or John Deere’s Operations Centre individually or togtether – obviously the Ops Centre is our focus but my job is to supercharge the shift to digital.”
Jordan says across a multi-brand enterprise the program starts with the export of all the data across all machines to get the foundation right – to build a consistent filing system.
He says even making sure everyone is using the right name – and the same name – for individual paddocks is a part of that foundation.
Then it’s a case of turning to the technology to create assets such as recording of boundaries – accurate geo-referenced points on the earth using real time kinematics (RTK).
“A GPS receiver capable of RTK takes in the normal signals from the global navigation satellite systems, along with a correction stream to achieve centimetre-positional accuracy,” Jordan explains.
“It not only tells you exactly what you’ve got, to within 2.5cm accuracy – by building an image from recorded data taken every few seconds from a machine – it gives your digital strategy incredible flexibility, especially when you are seeking different levels of accuracy,” he says.
“It really makes its mark, for example, in areas such as controlled traffic and inter-row sowing – your farm is mapped with unprecedented accuracy, from top to bottom, and all that data is there at the touch of your fingertips and can be managed in virtual real time.”
And it’s not just about in-paddock potential, once you have your data standardised Jordan says your ability to leverage it in unexpected, and previously unavailable ways, is staggering.
He says when you have objectively amassed all this data, when you have all your soil and leaf test records online, when every farm record is digitised instead of you shuffling through piles of paperwork, when every square centimetre of your property is mapped so you know how every one of those centimetres can perform at any given time, you are really in charge.
“And you are in the world of spatial economics,” Jordan explains.
“That won’t be the end game, because as the data and the digitals advance, so will the applications, but here and now spatial economics is the next big thing,” he says.
“Particularly because it isn’t just a farming tool, it’s a powerful bargaining tool.
“Just think about it, you’ve spent $10,000 on infield environment sensors feeding data into Ops Centre to realise you are facing a $100,000 urea decision you need to add to the program to maximise a season.
“With your data you can sit down with your finance provider and not just ask for the unbudgeted cash and say you think it will pay off, your Ops Centre data integrated with other data can support return on investment evidence necessary to justify the funding.
“Your connectivity is the key to this. Or take harvest itself, your digital systems are monitoring every facet of the operation, right down to telling you where and when to have, for example, a fuel truck on standby so you minimise downtime.
“But if you were to ask me to justify it in simple, plain English, I would say it doesn’t just minimise downtime, it puts you and your team in the driving seat and it will maximise your total return on investment because for the first time, you will have nailed down everything you do, everything you are going to do and do it all with a database you could only have dreamt of a few years ago.”
