From Race Car Driver to Arkansas Farmer, How Travis Senter’s Obsession With Data is Paying Off

If proof is in the pudding, Arkansas farmer Travis Senter’s sea of soybeans may be the sign of how paying attention to every detail can add up.

“It’s not uncommon for us to grow 70-bushel [per acre] beans, 80-bushel beans, 90-bushel beans. We can grow good soybeans here,” admits Senter, who farms in Keiser, Ark.

Senter’s soybean crop looks like a monster this year, but that’s not what his mind is focused on most days. Unlike many farmers you meet, he’s always thinking about technology and what’s next. For him, big yields start with collecting and recording as much data as possible every time a piece of equipment enters the field.

“I hate not recording data when we’re going across the field, no matter what we’re doing,” he says. “I want to make sure we’re recording and getting that information because you don’t know when you’re going to use that information.”

That’s a lot of data, considering Senter’s family, along with their local farming partner, farm more than 20,000 acres. Senter says it’s technology and data that help him manage all those acres effectively and efficiently.

“I’ve always been interested in computers, building computers,” says Senter. “Whether it’s technology or equipment, I’m always trying to be a cutting edge. When autosteer came along and when John Deere introduced all this technology with the JDLink System, my father was a little bit older, and he couldn’t really figure out some of this stuff. So that was sort of my niche to get involved in farming and to really ramp up our technology side of things.”

A Generational Shift

Finding a niche is exactly what Senter did, and he went all in. If you walk into his office today, there’s not a single piece of paper on his desk. Everything is focused on technology, including dual 49” displays for his computer.

That view is quite the contrast from Travis’ dad’s office. Walk into his office, which is just across the hall, and there’s a clear difference in technology use.

“I have an iPhone, but no, I don’t have a computer,” says Travis Senter Sr., with a smile.

Instead, the way he keeps records is a little more old school: he uses a classic pen and paper.

“I write it down. I have one of these books for every year of my farm and career,” he says, while holding up a composition notebook. “I write down planting dates, varieties, irrigation. I run out of pages, and I write down everything, and then I go back to it.”

(Mike Byers )

Travis Sr. may be more old school, but he finds great value—and pride—in what his son’s already done.

“When he came home out of college, he was already running and gunning. I knew I had something special,” says Travis Sr. “With my son coming on board, helping us, it has really opened up things. He brought a lot of new things to the farm that makes it easier, and I love all that stuff. It’s just I’m a little slower at it. I want him to get it, and we just keep investing in it, because we know it helps the farm.”

The Go-To-Guy for Technology

Travis Senter isn’t just the technology whisperer on the family farm, he’s everybody’s go-to guy in the Keiser area for technology. And how he learns and keeps up on the latest tech trends is by simply experimenting.

“It’s a lot of trial and error,” he admits. “You want to go all in and buy the next greatest thing, but that’s not always the best way. I’ve watched a lot of farmers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for things that they’ll not use in two years from now, because that company will go bankrupt,” he adds. “So, you’ve got to do your research and try to figure out exactly what works best for you.”

When Senter finds something that works, he goes all in. That was the case when he was trying to find a way to stay connected to all of the family’s machines on the farm, and it’s not just a few tractors to keep track of. They have a massive fleet. Senter says they operate 33 tractors, three cotton pickers, three combines, four sprayers, a number of excavators and 20 semi-trucks.

“We had one or two units we were swapping from this tractor to that tractor, and so it was kind of a pain. I finally worked out a deal and thought, ‘What if we just get everything connected? Get autosteer on everything, put displays in everything, do recording on everything,’ because that makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about what’s recording here, what’s recording there. Just bring it all in.”

(Travis Senter)

How Racing Made Him a Better Farmer

Senter has a love for technology, and he also has a love for racing with rows and rows of awards and trophies to show for it.

“In what I call my previous life, I was a race car driver and not only a race car driver, I was also a race car builder,” he says.

(Travis Senter)

For 20 years, Senter traveled across the country, and even the world, building and driving race cars.

“Data collection in racing is probably done more so than in farming,” says Senter. “I had extreme amounts of data on my race car in 2005 to record where I go, where I’m at, all this information that I would study and try to be better. And so that exact thing is what amplified my sensors and my data collection for farming.”

Senter says the ability to collect information in racing is what helped him become an even better race car driver. Today, his ability to collect information and data is what is making him an even better farmer.

“Building race cars, racing race cars, has definitely helped me be a better farmer, which is strange to say,” says Senter.

Using ChatGPT as a Tool on the Farm

Senter’s time on the track may also be why he’s so willing to take risks today and try things that are unheard of on the farm. One example is the way he’s grabbed onto artificial intelligence (AI).

“Taking ChatGPT, for example, you can throw some of your data in there and it will spit out what you’re expected to make. And, if you can throw in enough information and give it the right prompts, I feel like we could change our decision-making,” he says.

Last summer, before there was the ability with ChatGPT to add files, Senter and his own son created their own AI model. The goal was to take their 10-year yield history in every field, add in planting and harvesting dates, the varieties or hybrids they planted, and combine that information with weather data.

“Then you can compare information and say, ‘My best year of yield was when I planted this date, this was the average temperature during pollination.’ You can derive that from all this weather information,” Senter says. “So, if I planted at this particular date with this particular variety, and I know the pollination date and what temperature I’m going to have this year, maybe this will help me generate better yield information so I can market better. It opens up a whole realm of possibilities when you are able to throw in more information to this.”

Exploring Virtual Reality

Another unique idea he’s using on the farm is virtual reality.

“I’m not really a gamer, because I’m sort of too old for that. But I was a gamer, and I’ve always had VR headsets,” says Senter.

He says he really likes Apple’s new VR technology called Apple Vision Pro, but prior to that, the other VR headsets available didn’t give him any “wow” factor.

“The Apple Vision Pro is amazing with what it can do,” says Senter. “When you put it on and get it calibrated to you, it’s extremely impressive how your eyes are basically your cursor. You just look at something in it, and you click your fingers together, and it works.”

He admits that VR headsets are bulky today. But in the future, he thinks the technology will be in a pair of sunglasses.

“If you imagine 10 years from now, this is going to be smaller, and when you’re walking in the field and see a weed, you can take a picture of it. You can enter that in ChatGPT, and you can ask what that weed is and how you can kill it. And it’ll tell you,” says Senter.

He says it’s a simple way to ask a question, and it’s one that won’t be judged.

“When I ask that question to a professor or a doctor, they may look down on me and think I should probably already know this, and maybe I should or maybe I forgot it. It doesn’t matter. But I get an answer from ChatGPT, and then I can follow it up with more questions. And when you think about that, it opens up a whole realm of possibilities.

Combing Through the Data

Even with those tools, it all goes back to data and capturing as much data as possible on every acre and with every pass. That’s what helps Senter solve some of the problems on his farm.

“If I look at a field and see a problem spot, I’ll instantly pull out my phone and figure out when we sprayed that and when that spot got missed, so I can come back and fix that,” says Senter. “I then know when the applicator missed it. I know what he missed doing, for example.”

(Mike Byers)

He says whether it’s when he’s spraying, planting or harvesting, he looks at the data every night, no matter the time of year.

“When I get home from work, I’ll probably spend two or three hours on a computer every night going through fields, looking at maps and just making sure everything got planted right or everything was sprayed right. And that’s usually why I do it,” says Senter.

In the fall, he says it may be midnight before he gets home, but he always goes through the data to make sure everyone is on the same page.

By carefully calculating every move on his farm, he’s controlling what he can control, instead of leaving it up to chance.

“We take every single truck across one scale, just that one scale. We record that information and I’ll enter that in some spreadsheets. I’ve tried different software companies, but Excel and Google Sheets are my saving grace from some of that,” says Senter. “I’ll enter all that information every single night after we get done, so I know exactly how much grain is in the field, and then I’ll send out a report the next day showing exactly how many acres we harvested, how much grain is in this bin and what their average moisture was. There’s lots of information that we try to keep up with.”

A Valuable Tool Today: John Deere Operations Center Mobile

One thing he’s excited to use this fall is something he suggested to John Deere in the past few years. Senter relies heavily on John Deere’s Operations Center Mobile app year-round. He says it’s extremely valuable to help him see real-time information, including fuel information.

What’s new this year is when Senter pulls into a field to harvest, the app will give him an estimated time of completion.

“It gives you a percentage of how much you have left, and what time you should be done. And it’s an adjustable scale,” he says. “I kept mentioning to Deere that we really need a way to know that information, just like when you go on a trip and use GPS for your trip, you know your ETA and you’re trying to beat that time of arrival. We try to beat that time to finish harvest. The app actually keeps everybody up to date of how much is left in that field.”

With that real-time information, Senter can be more strategic about when they finish a field and move to the next, making sure to miss heavy traffic times, like when school gets out in the afternoon. He says it’s a handy feature and one he’s excited to use this fall.

From the race track to the farm field, Senter knows the race to farm effectively and efficiently isn’t slowing down.

“I’m always learning. I’m always finding ways to integrate new things,” says Senter.

Watch the full feature on Senter and how he thinks about technology on the farm differently.