Farmwave in the Field: Soybean Harvest Loss Reduction
Hearing reports from the field about how Farmwave is saving farmers money makes our day. Here we’re covering a twitter thread from Jake Smoker, a farmer in Indiana, USA who achieved nearly 90% loss reduction using the Farmwave system while harvesting soybeans.
“It’s fair to say if you are in production ag, you have all been burned by ag tech companies that have way over promised, and delivered nothing. We spend a ton of money on a “solution” that ends up with our data getting mined and an app that does basically nothing.
Enter a company called @farmwave….. three years ago @cwganssle and his team came out to our farm and put cameras on our combine because they were going to use Artificial Intelligence to track combine loss. Sounded like voodoo to me…
They spent two days taking pictures with cameras strapped to the combine and then moved on to the next grower. If these guys could deliver on what they were saying they could do it would be big. Combine loss measuring hasn’t changed in 30 years.
Fast forward to today. Been doing beans for the last couple weeks. Had a rain delay where I was able to get @farmwave's Version 3 system installed. Took an hour to do the complete install. Rolled into the field with it ready to rock.
Now I had been doing beans for a couple weeks as of right now. I HAD THE COMBINE SET. Loss was always acceptable. Rolled into the field ready for the system to verify how good I can set a combine. Narrator: he did in fact not have the combine set as well as he could.
Got going and immediately noticed it putting loss out the back (it was acceptable to me the day before looking on the ground)… and I started to mess with the combine settings. It’s game on now. It will be as low as I can make it.
The combine was putting between 25 and 40 beans out the back. Not good. Made one change. Decreased the fan speed by 50 rpm took the loss down to 5 beans out the back. One change! And the loss was acceptable to me beforehand!
Now imagine spreading that result out across the whole farm. Beans and corn aren’t cheap, and the inputs it takes to make them aren’t cheap either. Now imagine tech that actually returns on day one. I still think it’s voodoo, but the scoreboard doesn’t lie. Happy harvest y’all.”
Jake Smoker is a farmer in Northwestern Indiana, USA. He is an early adopter of our technology and sits on the Farmwave Advisory Board.
We wish everyone a safe harvest. Be sure to follow us on social media for reports from the field.
