Joe Bassett, president of Dawn Equipment Co., highlights features of the company’s new Reflex X-Sense planter downforce system, which relies on magnetically charged latching to open and close two small valves. This is the first row-crop system that is a digital hydraulic control device, Bassett says.

Scott Shearer, chairman of the ag engineering school at Ohio State University, talks about the drastic difference he's seeing in the life of the iron versus the life of the software and some of the precision technology being put on equipment.

Today’s farm equipment includes computers and technology systems ranging from engine controls, to guidance systems, to media and entertainment systems. Making each system work is computer software.