Frederick William Nelson

The GreenStar precision farming system

In late 1993, John Deere formed the Precision Farming Group and empowered its members to develop products and services to serve customers of the production agriculture industry. A comprehensive, integrated solution to the current and future needs of our customer base in this emerging industry at that time. The first 12 months of the groups existence was spent studying basic concepts for sensors, processing computers, mapping systems, and one of the most critical elements, a method for providing positioning information to all North American and worldwide customers. The result of the above system study is the GreenStar precision farming system. It is the first system publicly announced which includes not only all elements for yield mapping, but a pathway for growth into a system which will include all elements of a customers farming operation from planting to harvest. Additionally, Deere is the first major equipment producer to fully embrace open architecture.