“Newly Innovative Automatic Depth Controller for Peanut Diggers”

Ag-Tastic Solutions of Saint John’s County, Florida and Greentronics Ltd. announce the immediate availability of their 1^st to Market “Automatic Depth controller for Peanut diggers”.

Iron City, GA—Ag-Tastic Solutions of Saint John’s County, Florida announced today that they have completed and successfully tested a fully functional “Newly Innovative Automatic Depth Controller for Peanut Diggers” using a RiteDepth controller manufactured by Greentronics Ltd. Greentronics have been constructing  Height and depth controllers for agricultural crops for several years. The use of the RiteDepth controller has a proven record in many other root crops, but peanuts have been a challenge because of the thick vegetative canopy during harvest. Such a challenge that many others who have been racing to find a solution have not been successful. The breakthrough was made possible after one farmer’s desire to make this system work on his farm. The solution simply proves again that only the farmer can provide the necessary information and  the proper tweaks needed to make applications  work in the field. Kyle Sheffield of Iron City, GA is the farmer who is credited  with the missing link and is the focus of this Press Release.

We expect and are confident that a depth controller will save enough to pay for itself in the first year, based on the model of a farmer with 2000 acres of peanuts. That is an impressive ROI and one that Ag-Tastic is proud to be a part of. Scott Graddy of Ag-Tastic Solutions stated that “Greentronics products have proven time and again that their equipment has one of the best ROIs for my customers. Each time we install one, it is a win – win for us  and the customer. I thoroughly believed  that somehow there was a way to design a RiteDepth controller work for peanuts, but like everyone else, we were looking too hard and complicating things. Kyle’s modification to his KMC digger was the perfect solution.

Full details on how you can get one reserved for your digger, contact Scott Graddy with Ag-Tastic Solutions (904) 201-3509

Debut of the product

Ag-Tastic and Greentronics will have a booth “AB310” at the 2015 SunBelt Expo in Moutlrie GA on Oct. 20-22

About Ag-Tastic Solutions

Ag-Tastic Solutions sells a multitude of Precision Ag technologies. They are a full service and sales company based in St. Augustine, FL. Ag-Tastic is the only Greentronics Dealer south of the Mason Dixon Line.

For more information for obtaining a quote for a kit to compliment your Peanut Digger, contact:

It is a pretty compelling report comparing organic to conventional. There is plenty of data to support both sides of the isle but this report is from a non-profit that was founded in 1947. The report covers 30 years of side by side data.

Of course it does not cover all crops and is based in the north were the ground freezes, but it does present some compelling numbers worth looking at!

Here is a an excerpt from their invite:

I’m reaching out to you today because we’re getting ready to launch a new premium feature, Automatic Activity Recording, which records the work that’s being done on your fields. When you have this feature, the mobile app automatically detects when it enters a field; it then begins gathering information to intelligently determine details about an activity and record it in your system. This allows you to keep more detailed and accurate records without having to spend additional time entering information manually. 

We are really excited to launch Automatic Activity Recording and are likewise eager to get early feedback on it before we share it with all of our customers. If you’re interested in previewing it, we’d love to give you this feature for free for all of 2015; our only request is that you use the app to help us “train” it and then give us your honest feedback about how the feature is performing and how we can improve it for you.

If you’re interested in giving Automatic Activity Recording a try and you have an iPhone or Android phone, please just reply to me and let me know which phone you use. I’ll start working with our engineers to get you set up as soon as possible!

If you are not already a user of their FREE product, please go to FarmLogs and create an account. When you get a confirmation that your account it active, email Heidi (heidi@farmlogs.com) to tell her that Ag-Tastic referred you.

Aerial crop scouting performed on a weekly basis not only compliments soil data but validates all of your crop efforts up to that moment. It will greatly enhance your decisions on future (near and far) fertilizer and spray applications and whether you should implement Variable Rate technologies to account for soil variations. By owning your own UAV you can perform daily missions to help understand affects from a weather or disease event and make quick decisions on how to mitigate that event.

From a technical side, Ag-Tastic can provide you with pre-planning on what computer needs you have to have in place in order to manage all of the data “in house”. There are plenty of cloud based software offerings that have sprung up since the UAV inception, but most of these solutions are not built for the small farmer. Their costs can be prohibitive and the technical knowledge needed to work with them can be challenging. Our thoughts are that the small farmer can purchase a UAV and manage their own data.

UAV prices are low enough to be affordable for ANY farmer but which one do you choose and where do you get support. Ag-Tastic is working to secure partnerships and dealerships with various UAV manufacturers to provide local support.

Scott contacted John Slavens (Sales rep at Ag Express Electronics) about getting 4 sensors but was told that the release date was out beyond D&A’s planting schedule. Mr. Slavens used his influence to successfully procure some “1^st run” seed sensors prior to their release. With only a few days before planting Mr. Slavens was able to deliver the Hy Rate Plus sensors and the new wiring harness to mate the Monosem NG+ 4 row planter to the AgLeader Seed module. Now we could play!

The initial calibrations did not seem promising because we could not consistently simulate groundspeeds when rolling the drive wheels in the shed. It was disheartening that we could not get any valid counts so a call to Ag Express was in order. A follow up call from Dickey-john Corp. eased our concerns. It turns out that these new sensors have intelligence built into them to differentiate between dust, debris and the actual seed. The Hy Rate Plus sensors “self-learn” what is a valid seed amongst the other things that might pass by like dust or seed debris. This “self-learning” can take up to 500 seeds so all we could do now was to head out to the field and to test. The initial runs were closely looked at, with a foot on the clutch mentality. Thank goodness for the GPS guidance because driving was last thing we were looking at! After a few passes, it was evident that we were not getting any “self-learning” dips or highs, so the captain called for full speed ahead. We were ejected out of the cab so John could take care of business. At the end of the day, it was confirmed that we had succeeded in Monitoring Seed Population with Spacing information on ultra-small seeds across individual rows of a multi row planter. That’s Success at its Best.

Farmers are aware of the high cost associated with Transplants. Being able to successfully plant seeds, turns that transplant expense into an immediate savings. The common failures on a vacuum planter are misses caused by debris being caught in the seed depression. John Sykes said it best, Doubles are a cost concern but a miss is the most costly because you cannot grow something if there is not a seed there. By having the capability to recognize a miss, in short order, allows the driver to address the problem quickly.  Ag-Tastic Solutions is at the forefront of addressing these types of problems by combining technologies that have the best ROI for the farmer. Constant research into new products and engaging with the farmers is key to turning a problem into a solution. That is why Ag-Tastic Solutions motto is “WE MAKE PRECISION AG A REALITY”

A special thanks to all those involved, Kyle Snodgrass (Southeast regional sales manager for AgLeader), John Slavens (Sales Rep for Ag Express Electronics) and of course John Sykes (Farm Manager for D&A farms) for providing us with the opportunity to put this solution together.

A special thanks to John for allowing us to install a GPS guidance system in his Kubota to evaluate it and do demos for other farmers.