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an app for that<br />
Cash<br />
Grain<br />
Bids<br />
Cash Grain Bids Allows you<br />
to find out what your local grain<br />
elevators are paying. Enter your<br />
ZIP code to find out cash bids and<br />
base levels in your region. View<br />
results from five elevators near<br />
you. This tool is independently<br />
contracted by Farm Journal Media<br />
and brought to you by Bayer.<br />
vMEye<br />
Cloud<br />
vMEyeCloud Combined with<br />
vMEye Cloud Technology,<br />
this app allows users to use<br />
mobile surveillance on a phone<br />
or iPad. This is an innovative way<br />
to check cows without actually<br />
having to step out of the house.<br />
The<br />
Weather<br />
Channel<br />
The Weather Channel Make<br />
confident day-to-day decisions<br />
based on the world’s most<br />
downloaded weather app about<br />
what you’ll do to maximize your<br />
operation workload goals.<br />
Tractor<br />
House<br />
TractorHouse is a leading app<br />
updated daily for buyers and<br />
sellers of farm equipment. It<br />
features thousands of listings<br />
from hundreds of dealers in<br />
North America. It provides users<br />
with descriptions, photos and<br />
locations for all listed machinery.<br />
Its technology finds your location<br />
to list the available equipment<br />
closest to you. You can also tap<br />
to call or email the seller through<br />
the app, and make your purchase.<br />
TractorHouse is a product of<br />
Sandhills Publishing.<br />
enough just in nitrogen my first year that it<br />
paid for itself,” Rickertsen said.<br />
Using satellite images, the app takes pictures<br />
of the soil and tells farmers where to<br />
apply nitrogen and how much is needed. It<br />
can also report if your crops have had damage<br />
from weather or if disease is developing<br />
anywhere in the field. The app can even take<br />
information from certain combines in live<br />
time and give back instant results.<br />
“This app makes scouting a lot easier,”<br />
explained Mike Dicken, district manager<br />
with Kruger Seeds. “If there is a problem<br />
appearing on a satellite image in the field, I<br />
can drop a [digital] pin on the problem area,<br />
and it will give me directions to the place of<br />
the problem.”<br />
Not only does Dicken use it for his operation,<br />
he has helped several others to get<br />
started with the technology. The app is user<br />
friendly enough that even those in the technological<br />
generation gap can use it, he said.<br />
This type of app is not only an operational<br />
investment, Rickertsen said. Its weather<br />
capabilities and disease detection are like an<br />
insurance policy, so to speak.<br />
Climate FieldView owners, like a lot of<br />
other app owners, have invested time and<br />
money into the app to ensure it offers the<br />
best results possible. They are now working<br />
to make the app more versatile in the types<br />
of combines it works in with real time and a<br />
profitability calculator, Dicken said.<br />
Crop farmers aren’t the only ones who<br />
benefit from app usage. The app stores offer<br />
a wide spectrum of weed identification<br />
tools, weather apps, and chemical mixing<br />
calculators. They also offer a lot for livestock<br />
producers – anything from cattle breed<br />
association apps, herd management apps,<br />
and sow gestation management tools to market<br />
apps and daily agriculture news.<br />
Some apps have a significant agriculture<br />
use and might not even be intended for agriculture<br />
– the camera systems like Delaney<br />
uses in his cattle barn, for example.<br />
Camera systems vary in price, but with<br />
many systems the app itself comes at no<br />
additional cost. Some systems allow users<br />
to zoom in and out, and notify them of any<br />
movement.<br />
“Cattle move all the time, so I don’t use<br />
that feature,” Delaney explained.<br />
The data include what time and date the<br />
images were taken, so farmers can take<br />
screenshots and refer back to the images.<br />
Delaney’s system allows up to 16 cameras<br />
to be installed and viewed. They are also<br />
connected to computers that show live footage,<br />
so he doesn’t have to check his phone<br />
Garrett Delaney displays how he uses an app on his phone<br />
constantly.<br />
This type of system is also useful to check<br />
when an animal is in heat and determine<br />
when would be a good time to artificially<br />
inseminate.<br />
Some ag industry professionals find that<br />
apps are an efficient way to get up-to-the<br />
moment market information.<br />
Many of the leading agriculture businesses<br />
in our country have developed their own<br />
app. John Deere, Monsanto, and AgWeb<br />
96 <strong>Eastern</strong> <strong>Iowa</strong> <strong>Farmer</strong> | spring <strong>2017</strong>
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