There was plenty of technology on display at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis., a few weeks ago. Farm Equipment editor Mike Lessiter caught up with Monarch Tractor’s John Issacson and got his take on the top 5 applications in autonomy right now.

Last week, I shadowed Dave Thompson in Amboy, Ill. He’s a precision farming specialist with Case IH dealer Johnson Tractor. He tells me most of his customers were done with harvest by the middle of October.

The announcement of a partnership between New Holland and Bluewhite was one of the big precision stories of the summer. West Coast New Holland dealers now have the rights to sell, distribute and service Bluewhite’s aftermarket autonomy kits.

It’s been a busy summer for the dealership formerly known as Alliance Tractor after it was acquired by 22-store Sloan Implement in July.

Precision ag pioneer Al Myers is a member of the Farm Equipment Shortline Legends Hall of Fame 2024 class. It’s been almost 35 years since the Ag Leader founder introduced the groundbreaking Yield Monitor 2000. It’s hard to quantify just how much Al’s invention and career has meant to the precision ag industry.

The USDA, other U.S. government agencies and private companies use ag data to measure the impact of initiatives aimed at sequestering carbon. In 2022, the USDA announced a $3.1 billion program aimed at funding climate-smart commodity projects through collecting data, but a recent survey found that 58% of farmers do not trust government offices with their data. Agricultural attorney Todd Janzen says that the USDA cannot disclose specific information provided by producers or owners of agricultural land.

A large drone dealer in Florida can no longer fly drones over 55 pounds after allegedly violating multiple FAA regulations. Here’s what reportedly happened — FAA officials showed up at a training session hosted by the dealer and learned the pilot in command allegedly didn’t have registration for the drone, and he was flying it too close to a non-participating farmer.

Big news in the drone world — the Federal Aviation Administration recently granted Texas-based drone builder Hylio a regulatory exemption that will allow it to swarm its heavy-lift drones with only one operator in control.

We’ve covered autonomy extensively here in the Technology Corner. We’ve seen retrofit kits used for mowing and tillage, but what about planting cover crops? Jake Warford, precision specialist with Linco-Precision in Nokomis, Ill., tell us they’re just scratching the surface when it comes to implementing autonomy in their customers’ operations.

Today we’re spotlighting Trimble’s new see and spray technology. It’s called the Bilberry system — a camera-based system that enables farmers to save up to 90% on herbicide applications by only spraying where the weeds are in the field. And as Trimble’s Cory Buchs tells us, one of the best things about it is it retrofits to existing sprayers.