GPS Tracking ROI

Sorry, I fogot I owed you folfs an answer.  I wrote about an innovative Jogn Deere Inc. GPS/photo-imagery service here and posed the question, How many internal cumbustion engine tractors did founder John Deere ever see?

The answer seems like it would be difficult since Mr. deer’s distinctive green and yellow machinery is recognizable the world over, even by small boys who aren’t frustrated farmers or ranchers.

But Mr. Deere died in 1888, when there were virtually no steam driven traction engines in use on American farms.   It’s unlikely he ever even saw one of these external combustion bhemoths … but the first tractor to bear the John Deere name (the Dain) and the first tractor to be a commercial success for Deere (which didn’t bear their name, it was a “Waterloo Boy product) both came along in 1912/13 … so zero would be a safe answer to the question.

And no, the Waterloo Boy didn’t have a GPS … but it would have been a better tractor if it had.

As you know I’m a great believer in distributing technology to the places where it can be used most. I spent a lot of my life working for the government and working with large corporations who sometimes spend more time trying to protect “secrets” and “intellectual property” than they do innovating or accomplishing anything. I also am not much of a fan of the class of folks in formal education who devise methods to make it harder for “ordinary folk” to use technology … such as the push over the last few years to make GIS and GPS “special practitioner” qualifications and try to take technology originated for the public good and move it farther and farther away from the public.

One of the technologies that has been beyond the reach of many has been “overhead imagery”, sort of a catchall phase that covers the collecting of information by flying over an area of the ground and collecting images via sensors … most familiarly, the sensor is a camera and the imagery produced is pictures of use to the human eye.

Among others, Google has brilliantly moved the world of useable, human-interpretable imagery out of the back room with their fabulous Google Maps and Google Earth. Although many people call this imagery by the generic term “satellite”, the great majority is collected by aircraft carrying special cameras and flying precise patterns over specific areas.

Aerial photogrammetery (mapping) has always been and expensive and time consuming process. The equipment carried in the aircraft is expensive and the aircraft typically have to be expensively modified to carry it. Pilots also have to have special training to be able to do the precision aspects of the necessary flying. Back “in the day” when I was working GIS mapping projects for the USAF we frequently had to make do with outdated imagery because there was no funding to survey areas of interest on a frequent enough basis.

One of my pet peeves is how many people in the US who are all benefiting from a strong agricultural economy seldom even realize how important farming is and how much farming and ranching contributes to the economy. One of the oldest names in agriculture, John Deere has now “unlocked” many of the secrets of precision aerial mapping. With a simple “strap on” camera pod (that’s the white bullet shape in the lower right, any economical rental Cessna can be a camera platform and any normally qualified pilot can follow the GPS/computer generated cockpit display to do the precision patterns required. Fascinating use of technology and overnight another whole mysterious set of “secret key holders” now find that ordinary mortals can do what was before their secret skills.

The way they are using this system is fascinating in itself, read the full write-up in Farm and Ranch Guide here. Bonus trivia question … as most of you know or could guess, the John Deere company is named after its founder, ag inventor John Deere. For a free one year subscription to this blog, leave me a comment and tell me how many internal combustion tractors John Deere ever saw in his lifetime? (hint … you _can_ give a definitive answer). Tune in tomorrow for the answer.

LUXEMBURG, Wisconsin (AP) — Stacy Martin needed a bird’s eye view to see her boyfriend’s marriage proposal.

Brian Rueckl’s proposal came as a 40,000-square-foot message, “Stacy will you marry me?” tilled in a cornfield near the Manitowoc and Kewaunee county line.“At first I was in shock and forgot to say, ‘yes,”‘ Martin said.Rueckl, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, persuaded Martin to take an airplane ride with him Monday to take pictures of the land.

The proposal came after a year of planning and 40 hours of work. Rueckl, 23, tilled the message, which included two intersecting hearts, on a farm owned by his boss. Full article here:

Students use GPS to identify noxious weeds

By ALANA LISTOE - IR Staff Writer - 05/26/06

Students from Helena Middle School spent Thursday using technology to locate noxious weeds at the Lewis and Clark Fairgrounds.

“They constrict other plant’s growth,” said Anna Metropoulos, an HMS seventh-grader. “They take over and don’t let the other plants get nutrients.”

The 57 seventh-graders broke into seven groups, each equipped with a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) device. In a line formation the students walked along the grounds, marking the points to identify where noxious weeds are located. They input longitude and latitude specifications and also noted density information of each weed.

Students have spent the entire year working in the school lab identifying weeds and becoming acquainted with the GPS technology…. Full Article Here:

Here’s a cute little “good news” article with more behind it than meets the eye. I know, going in, that about 98% of Americans who glance at the headline will think, “How boring, who cares about weeds”? Well I can’t make anyone care, nor should I be able to, but perhaps you might just wish to read on a little further and see why I think it has some importance.

Despite America’s current penchant for ‘something from nothing’ … are you listening, Mr. Lay? , true wealth only comes from manufacturing something. At the basis of everything is food … absent food we can’t exist. When the US was young, we became rich because any poor man could come here, get free land and manufacture food. A hundred years ago a majority of the US population were farmers or in other trades directly connected with the production of food.

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