Until recently, I’d never lived close enough to a Wal-Mart to warrant making regular trips to the consumer giant. There were always enough other local outlets where I could piece together commercial needs or wants. 

Diversification is an en vogue term when it comes to dealers’ approach to developing a broad base of precision farming services. As more look beyond the shelves stocked with technology components to find recurring sources of revenue, agronomic and data management services are highly visible options to build around.

Although Google’s autonomous car got a lot of press, the auto-guidance system on tractors, combines, sprayers and other farm equipment has been around for years.

In today’s world, there are few frustrations that test the patience of people more than malfunctioning technology. We’ve grown so accustomed to the instant gratification provided by the handheld devices that have become essentially electronic appendages.

There’s no shortage of competition among precision farming manufacturers, with both OEM and aftermarket suppliers jockeying for market share. Acquisitions and strategic partnerships continue to shape the future of the industry.

Let’s face it: Today’s world can easily cause information overload. When equipment dealers develop marketing strategies, they’re still categorizing media as traditional and digital. Marketing has become multi-screened, and media channels are becoming intertwined.

As custom harvesters make their way across the United States and Canada this summer, I keep wondering what happens to all that yield data these machines are collecting.

Returning for a third time to the Agricultural Electronics Foundation’s (AEF) annual North American Plugfest event in Lincoln, Neb., I again marveled at the intensity of the dozens of engineers as they hustled from station to station in search of enhanced equipment compatibility.

I think I could write a book about the changes involved in moving from Microsoft's Windows to Apple's OS, but one thing is the same — both Microsoft and Apple are now insistent on forcing users to use their cloud platforms.