Settled just south of Holland, Mich., it’s always busy on Scenic View Dairy. This time of year, with 2,000 head of cows being milked and a couple thousand acres of crops in the field, it’s bustling more than ever.
“The crops look pretty good this year,” says Brian Geerlings, a partner in Scenic View Dairy. “We got off to a little bit of a slow start with a cooler spring, but we’ve got some heat right now that’s really making crops turn around, and they’re looking good.”
Geerlings says while weather is a challenge year-to-year on the farm, his other biggest challenges as a dairy producer are milk prices and finding enough labor.
“Labor has been a challenge, obviously. It seemed like after the Covid pandemic, we couldn’t get people to work quite as well,” says Geerlings. “The pricing [of milk] has been a challenge. There’s been ups and downs. It’s not a lot of fun when we can’t pay our bills. And that weighs heavy on us when we can’t. So, pricing matters a lot in those situations.”
The reality for dairy producers is milk prices had been below the cost of production for consecutive years. Geerlings says lately prices have turned around, so the dairy side of the business is a little more optimistic.
That’s good news for Scenic View Dairy, because the partners are serious about milking cows and pumping close to 40 million pounds a day. But Geerlings says the operation is much more than a dairy farm. The producers are progressive, proactive and always on the hunt for the best technologies.
“We’ve done several things in the last 20 years,” he says. We’ve put in anaerobic digesters, drones for spraying fields and now this new See & Spray technology with John Deere, that I think have been very valuable. There are other technologies we’ve looked at and passed on either because they didn’t seem to be a good fit for our farm, or they didn’t provide good ROI or a payback.”
Geerlings says they definitely don’t shy away from technology. From turning methane gas into natural gas and putting it in a pipeline, to finding new ways to spray crops, the partners are always looking for ways to become more efficient and are often early adopters of technology.
One of the recent additions to the farm was a sprayer. Instead of buying a new sprayer, the dairy opted for a used sprayer, but added a precision upgrade kit with See & Spray.
“We’re working with some weeds that are herbicide resistant. It’s really no secret that those are out there, and we have a couple that are a problem for us,” he says. “But we really wanted to be able to control costs. The weed isn’t widespread, it’s in certain areas or spots in the field. So to broadcast-spray the entire field would have been very costly.”
He says weed-control programs can cost anywhere from $20 to $30 per acre, but by being able to see and spray only the weeds actually present in a field, the technology is producing a savings even bigger than he imagined would be possible.
“I have a couple of fields that I was spraying last week, and I think we saw 26% of an area applied in one field. And then in another field we sprayed around 43% of it. So, there are fields with the higher weed pressure and some with lower. But in either case, the benefits add up quick.”
He says he’s cut his herbicide use by 60% in some fields, and even more in others.
“We were going to be happy if it was a 50% reduction,” Geerlings says. “We’re pretty much exceeding what we were hoping for, which obviously makes the technology pay even more. It’s really working well for us.”
That herbicide cost savings even caught their local retailer by surprise.
“He showed us some maps and he was at 34% in this one field of applying product. So, he’s saving a significant amount,” says Josh Rabbers, ag sales manager at GreenMark Equipment in Michigan. “I think this is a big game changer for what we’re going to see in the future just to have chemical savings and benefits in just spraying those certain problem spots in the field.”
Geerlings says watching the sprayer work in the field has been impressive.
“It’s amazing that the cameras that are on the booms are seeing weeds that I can’t see as an operator,” he says. “These machines are so wide; nowadays, they are 120-feet wide. From the seat, you have to be able to see 60 feet each direction. And to be able to see weeds that are an inch tall or less at times, you can’t possibly do a good job of spot spraying.”
What he’s been really impressed with is watching the nozzles fire on and off as the camera sees and sprays a weed. And that’s exactly how the technology works. Each camera serves as a set of eyes, finding weeds so small that not even Geerlings or the farm’s sprayer operator can see them.
“It has cameras along the boom, and it’s looking ahead of it and seeing the weed that’s there. It’s spraying product on just the weed there,” Rabbers says.
For a dairy that sits close to Lake Michigan, the savings isn’t just about dollars. Less herbicide use means applications are more environmentally friendly than ever.
“My dad always said farmers were the first environmentalists. So, it really fits with our philosophy of trying to not use more product than we absolutely have to,” Geerlings adds.
Geerlings is seeing solid savings result in dollars and environmental costs, and in the process uncovering even more opportunities on the farm, making Scenic View Dairy truly leading-edge.
