To keep things simple, all of the information within VRAFY can be found in one place and fully integrates with John Deere Operations Center, no matter what color equipment you run.

EQUIPMENT: John Deere S780 combine, with a John Deere 800R application system configured with a 4600 series monitor.

We demoed VRAFY on 612 acres of corn. After seeing how efficient it was for us time wise to take our soil maps and generate prescriptions for fertility, we decided to enroll the entire farm, including all the rice and soybeans. It’s minutes compared to several hours in front of the computer. On our previous program, we would have to either pay a fee for every application or run every soil point through a formula on Excel. If we’re busy and I have to be on a combine or in a tractor or in a truck, I can’t be sitting in front of a computer figuring out crop removal rates.

VRAFY does all that. We run everything through John Deere Operations Center, and it’s fast. I can do it through my phone or jump on the laptop and send it to the floater in less than 10 minutes. It’s increased my efficiency ten-fold, so I love it.

We’re also saving on fertilizer. Where we have been kind of a shot in the dark on potash, we are now seeing we have well overapplied in a lot of areas, especially when you see crop removal based on our yields.

Even in the high-yielding fields, we were higher than we needed to be and were creating salinity issues from the amount of potash we were applying. In some areas, we went from applying 300 pounds of potash to 100, so that’s pretty significant. That’s $40 to $60 per acre right there.

On top of what we’re able to do with fertility, there’s also the NDVI and standard vegetative index. One thing I have noticed is it shows how good you are at watering efficiency. Or with diseases like white mold, you can go out and make an application based off what you see, and in dry areas you can go out and spot treat fungicide.

Finally, the support staff is absolutely wonderful. Every time I call, my issue gets resolved, and I learn something new every time I talk to them. The VRAFY platform is undersold, and in combination with John Deere Ops Center, it’s a game changer for what we’re trying to accomplish. I really like the program, and it’s well worth it.

EQUIPMENT: John Deere X9 combine with John Deere 445 tribox spreader, and John Deere 612R and Hagie ST12 sprayers for liquid applications.

We’ve had VRAFY for a bit over a year. Last fall, we used it as the combine went over the field, then used VRAFY to do soil sampling in one-acre grids and have that info come back to our John Deere Ops Center account.

The one-acre grids really opened our eyes to where the variability was. Having a platform to be able to go back to put nutrients on to equal the ground out really helped us out. Manganese was one that’s really expensive. We were just applying it at 150 pounds per acre, but after sampling, we found out we needed a higher rate in some parts of the field and none in others. With phosphorus and potash, we were able to do the same. Overall, we spent about the same on fertility, but with a lot more efficiency.

This year, we have our soil samples so we’ll be able to follow the combine with the fertilizer application. In some fields, we’ll be able to go in just as soon as the combine leaves. For us, we’ve got a smaller crew, so when we have the people ready, we can just send the prescription to the machine and get to work. It’s all very easy because it is able to go through my John Deere account to read the samples and send prescriptions back through to the applicator.