News

March 8 2012
Solar Flare Could Disrupt GPS, Radio Communications and Power Grids
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center reported the sun erupted Tuesday evening (March 6), creating one of the largest solar flares in six years. Another major flare on March 7 was recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.  The sun is in a 11 year cylce of solar flare activity.
A CME (coronal mass ejection) propelled toward Earth by the solar flare (which is the second largest in this solar cycle, the largest so far was on 9 August 2011).  Travelling faster than 1300 miles per second, it was expected to reach Earth on March 8th at about 6025 UT (plus or minus 7 hours).  The flare accelerated energetic protons toward Earth, triggering a solar radiation storm that is mainly a nuisance to satellites, perhaps causing occasional reboots of a satellite’s onboard computers and adding noise to imaging systems.  NASA advises such a CME could result in disruption to GPS, high frequency radio communications and power grids.

See the following link for more information:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News030712-X1.5.html

 

 

 

Farm Works and Great American Insurance to work together
LOVELAND, Colo., Jan. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) announced today a strategic alliance with Great American Insurance Group to help farmers automate their crop insurance reporting under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Federal Crop Insurance Program. The new recordkeeping system makes it possible for Farm Works™ users to submit their crop insurance records electronically to Great American Insurance Group. The time-saving solution makes it simple for farmers to transfer planting and harvest data directly to the Great American Insurance Group systems from their Farm Works Mapping software.

“Aligning with Trimble provides great value to our crop insurance customers and serves to distinguish us in the marketplace,” said Tim Copeland, divisional vice president of Marketing at Great American Insurance Group, Crop Insurance Division. “It will also increase awareness among farmers about how precision agriculture tools can help improve accuracy and efficiency in crop insurance reporting.”

In 2011 the USDA Federal Crop Insurance Program, administered by the Risk Management Agency (RMA), began accepting precision agricultural data which meets the specific requirements listed in RMA’s Crop Insurance Handbook and/or Loss adjustment Manual. The new reporting system will help farmers more quickly, easily and accurately meet USDA requirements related to acreage, planting and harvest. Geo-referenced data may be collected from the tractor or combine cab with a compatible precision farming display such as the Trimble® FmX® integrated display or CFX-750™ touch screen.

“Farmers increasingly list data managment and recordkeeping among their top management concerns,” said Erik Arvesen, vice president and general manager forTrimble’s Agriculture Division. “As the USDA now allows precision agriculture-based recordkeeping and begins standardizing its recordkeeping requirements, we are very pleased to be among the first to provide a comprehensive crop insurance data solution to Great American Insurance and Trimble customers.”

Trimble’s Agriculture Division is a leader in precision agriculture and guidance, operating globally with resellers throughout the world. Trimble’s Connected Farm™solutions help customers operate farm vehicles and implements more efficiently, save on input costs, and can increase yield and productivity. Solutions include vehicle and implement guidance and steering; application control for seed, liquid, and granular products; laser- and GPS-based water management technology; record keeping and seamless field-to-office information management.

 

Martens Farms Awarded Trimble International Information Management Sales Award

LOVELAND, COLO., January, 2011

 

Trimble Agriculture Division (Trimble Navigation Limited – NASDAQ :  TRMB) presented Martens Farms of Inman, Kansas with the International Information Management Sales Award for Outstanding Sales and Invaluable Customer Service for the year 2010.  Martens Farms is a dealer for Trimble Ag Precision technology and specializes in Farm Works software, a division of Trimble Agriculture.

 

Farm Works offers a variety of office & field software modules that can be integrated to provide farmers solutions that include: field record keeping, farm accounting, herd management, mapping and mapping analysis.  The software allows a farmer to take precision agricultural data and merge it with accounting to generate true profit maps and enterprise statements.  Profit maps can be automatically generated to show which precision farming practices are most profitable.

 

“Many of our farmer clients use the software to do field scouting, keep field records, map field boundaries, and record soil sampling,”  according to Lorra Martens, owner of Martens Farms.  “The software stands on its own quite nicely and gives a farmer management options whether it be simple field records or accounting, as well as herd management records.  If a client wants to move into detailed Precision Ag he can utilize the software with GPS technology and create field prescriptions that he can use to precisely apply chemicals or fertilizer on his fields, or use for planting or harvesting yield data.”

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