In a recent entry on The Mitchell Farm Web site (www.mitchellfarm.com), I wrote that “effectiveness comes from getting the one piece of information necessary to make a decision and leaving the rest unseen.” I was referring to how easy it is to get smothered in GPS field-generated data, but often not knowing how to put it to work.

It’s times like these when the sticker shock of rising costs combined with the opportunities presented by rising prices leads resourceful growers to take a new look at the way they run their operations. New and innovative technologies available today can help you reduce the use of materials and take fuller advantage of the assets you already have.

Tim Manchester was nonchalantly looking over yield maps when the clusters of dots representing yields glowed as brightly as a K-Mart blue light special.

Multi-purpose equipment aids efficiency, and current practices could qualify for soil and water conservation payments.

Several St. Louis National No-Tillage Conference attendees who use GPS auto-steer systems raised the question of adding more GPS wizardry directly to drills, planters and sprayers for reducing costly side draft on steep slopes.

For more accurate seeding and spraying, a few no-tillers are already starting to believe that global positioning satellite systems should be placed in the ground — where it may count the most.

With every new innovation that comes around to make our lives easier, there comes a price tag — usually a hefty one. And that rule of thumb is not set aside when it comes to auto-steering.