Kerry Lasters farming operation is not a one-man business. It takes a number of individuals to help plant and harvest the 5,600 acres in southeast Missouri. However, he says new technology like FieldView Drive is making supervision of field operations easier.

"Being able to see what is going on in the field while harvesting in real-time, is important," Lasters says. FieldView Drive allows him to sync to a number of iPADs to view field progress and data even when he is not in the combine cab. "I can watch yields as they come out of a field while I am in another field."

COMPATIBILITY: FieldView Drive is available for spring planting 2016. Farmers can track data from equipment, fields on multiple iPADs. The software is compatible with John Deere and Case IH planters.

The Climate Corporation, a division of Monsanto, recently launched FieldView Drive and it’s enabling software, FieldView Plus for the 2016 season. Doug Sauder, senior director of product for The Climate Corporation says that the new FieldView Drive is a significant advancement in data management. "It provides farmers with the data they need right in the field to help them make the important decisions."

FieldView Drive allows farmers to transfer field data from their equipment to their Climate FieldView account. The new technology connects tractors or combines across a network. It can also wirelessly map a farmer's data to an iPAD. Sauder notes that farmers can see information as they pass through fields, giving them insight into hybrid performance by field, soil zone and population with side-by-side views of planted and yield data.

Lasters was one of more than 300 farmers that was part of the beta testing for FieldView Drive and FieldView Plus. The beta spanned 650,000 crops acres with more than 5 billion unique data points mapped and more than 75,000 hours of FieldView Drive time logged.

ALWAYS WATCHING: Kerry Lasters can oversee this year's corn and soybean planting a little easier with the help of FieldView Drive. Lasters was one of 300 farmers that beta tested the product last year. He says three things set it apart from others: data management, portability and ease of use.

Some farmers were able to use the software to capture planting data including hybrid and planting populations, but Lasters came in on the testing at harvest. "I look forward to being able to use it during planting," he says. "It will allow me to do my own on farm trials, across all of my acres."

Mobile data
Capturing the data is important, but for Lasters the portability of data is key to making his operation successful.

"We have multiple iPADs in our operation," he notes. "If you are not in the combine you can still instantly see what is going on in the field. You are able to pull up data no matter where you are located whether it is in the tractor cab, field, truck or home."

Scott Chestnut, a farmer from Boone, Iowa was also part of the test. Like Lasters, he conducts several field trials of soybeans and corn on his own farm. He says that being able to view data from multiple pieces of equipment on one iPAD was "fantastic." Adding "this allowed me to easily share date with my son and compare maps to identify and get ahead of potential issues in the field."

Easy technology
Lasters' father works with him on the farm. "He has a smart phone and hates it," he says laughing. "But this he likes. It is easy to use and the set-up was quick."

Before using FieldView Drive, Lasters were relying on their own tractor company products for yield mapping and data collection. "Set up and selecting fields is a lot easier with (FieldView Drive)," he notes. "This is a simpler product to use versus other ones."

Then there is the customer service. "If we ever had a problem, the service guys were a phone call away," Lasters says. "They were right there to help us get it sorted out." Of course, he notes, that he was in the beta testing stage, so the kinks should be worked out for this year's planting season.

For the 2016 growing season, FieldView Drive is compatible with select John Deere and Case IH planters and John Deere combines. Lasters says the $499 starter kit is a "fair price for the value of the information we receive." He plans to add more devices to his farming operation this year.