[Technology Corner] Farmwave’s Autonomous Harvest Loss Technology Pays off for Corn, Soybean & Cotton Farmers

Farmwave founder and CEO Craig Ganssle says there’s been a lot of “over-promise and under-deliver” in ag technology. But that hasn’t been the case with his company’s autonomous harvest loss technology, and he has the results to prove it.

The multi-camera system counts grain loss in real time and customers who use it are seeing an increase of 3-8 bushels per acre in corn and soybeans.

We caught up with Ganssle at Linco-Precision’s new technology meeting in Nokomis, Ill., for a look at how the Farmwave system works.

“It's counting these losses in real time, 140 times an acre without stopping. The cameras on the back of the header are looking down at the ground, and the one on the rear of the machine typically is mounted on the axle pointed upward. Looking at the chopper spreader area, it's counting those kernels as they are in flight, coming out of the back, and then all the math is done, and it tells you about how many bushels per acre you're losing and where it's coming from on the machine. In real time, if you make an adjustment to minimize that loss, you then get to see the results immediately without stopping again to get out and see if what you did actually worked.”

Farmwave has been selling directly to farmers but is establishing a dealer network this year. They’re currently working with corn, soybean, and cotton farmers, and will soon expand to wheat, canola, barley and peanuts.