New PTI building opens for winter conference

PONTIAC, Ill. — When the pencil was first put to paper over a year ago to plan construction of the Precision Technology Institute building, opening the facility in the midst of a pandemic wasn’t on the radar.

However, despite the challenges of 2020, construction continued on schedule leading up to the building’s first public event — Precision Planting’s winter conference — on Jan. 19.

“We’re glad to have it, it’s just unfortunate with the COVID that we can’t have a whole lot of people here quite yet, but we’re excited it’s coming.”

—  Jason Webster, Precision Planting lead agronomist and Precision Technology Institute director

This was one of eight winter conferences held in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Idaho and Nebraska. The conferences were held across four days due to attendance restrictions imposed by health departments.

“It’s the first time we’ve had growers in here officially because of COVID. We still have a little furniture we have to move in yet, but we got done with the building about two weeks ago when we officially moved in here and working,” said Jason Webster, lead agronomist and PTI director.

Precision Planting acquired the 400-acre farm in 2018 and staff used a large temporary tent for hosting field days.

“It’s nice to have an office, running water and power; we didn’t have that here before. It took about 12 months for us to put this all together. We started late last fall. We’re glad to have it, it’s just unfortunate with the COVID that we can’t have a whole lot of people here quite yet, but we’re excited it’s coming,” Webster noted.

Multi-use Buidling

The building includes an 80-by-120-foot shop in the back with dual roles as an area to work on equipment and also hold larger gatherings of 300 to 400 visitors.

On either side of the front entrance are breakout rooms. The larger of the two conference rooms holds 75 to 80 people comfortably and can also be used as a banquet room.

“I can see a lot of businesses using that room such as industry partners. We’ll use it for our PTI events. Our Precision Planting dealers will use it. But I also welcome Illinois Corn Growers, Illinois Soybean Association, Farm Bureau and organizations like those to come in to use our facility. It’s a beautiful facility. We’d love for them to use it. It’s a nice central location and kind of neutral for a lot of companies, and we’d love to partner with them and let them use the facility,” Webster said.

The other breakout room to the right of the main entrance has a capacity of about 50.

“This is more of a classroom-type room. So, as we rotate people across the building, we’ll have the shop area with the equipment, an area for classroom training, and the other area for banquet style or larger dealer training in that room,” Webster added.

An office used for developing plot protocols is upstairs.

Future Plans

Looking ahead, construction of a grain drying and grain storage facility is planned at the PTI site this year.

“We just got the construction done on the building, and we’re going to keep going. There’s a huge demand for grain storage and dryers right now with commodity prices being where they’re at and I think that’s been a question. Since GSI is a member company of AGCO along with Precision Planting, we wanted to partner together,” Webster noted.

Webster said growers not only visit the farm to talk agronomy, but the conversation sometimes also turns to grain drying and storage.

“It’ll be a state-of-the-art mini system. It’s not a huge system. It’s small enough, but yet it would show if a grower put up a real type system on their farm, what it would look like, how it would work. They’ll actually see grain moving in. We’ll take it to the dryer. We’ll take it to the bins and then the unloading procedures,” he said.

PTI’s focus is on research, and the new grain drying and storage facility will also be research-based.

“I look at invisible yield testing,” Webster said. “In past years we’d start off harvesting corn. We’d get the dryer bin and wet bin full and then we’d harvest soybeans and then go back to corn and say, wait a minute, that corn was awesome when it was wet. Now that it’s a little bit drier, where did the yield go?

“We want to study what that invisible yield loss is. We’ve done studies like that in the past. If you’re just going to town with it, then what’s that invisible yield loss versus drying it yourself — what is that cost, what is that yield loss?”

Research may also look at the relationship of fungicide applications and corn moisture.

“Everybody says a fungicide application just makes your corn wetter. I think it does in general because it keeps it healthier and delays maturity, but is that corn easier to dry or tougher to dry. That’s one thing we’ve never done. Now we’ve got the ability to do it,” Webster said.

“Long-term maybe we put another dryer in so we can look at two different systems and how they work. That’s what I’m interested in. I can see it at the Farm Progress Show, but I can’t see them working. I can’t see physical grain moving from bin to bin, to dryer to bin and then how it’s unloaded into a truck and what does that whole thing look like versus what I have now on my home farm with the old bin sweeps and things like that.”

2020 Challenges

The pandemic forced Webster and his staff to make changes during the typically busy summer when PTI hosts daily field days for folks to see the over 75 test plots.

“It was a challenge. This summer we were limited to 50 people per field day. It just made us work a little longer to get the numbers that we wanted. I do like the small groups because it’s more of a one-on-one experience versus a large group where you just can’t talk to everybody. Here we can talk one-on-one and that helps all of us,” Webster said.

“I think a lot of growers came to us and said thanks for having it because there sure wasn’t anything else going on. We were glad to see farmers, as well and continue to talk agronomy. That’s the nice thing about it.”

Visitors to PTI are not only from the United States, but also from other nations.

“We get growers from all over the country that come here. They have different farms and they have different problems that they’re looking for solutions on and I just love the conversations. Every day is different,” Webster said.

“This past year we had mostly domestic visitors because of COVID. Once those regulations get taken away, I would envision an international flare once again whether it’s Canada or South America, those have always been large groups, and China, places like that.

“It’s interesting having groups come in that want to see what we’re doing, and I love to hear what they’re doing, too. Sometimes it’s totally different, and we learn from it. Sometimes the concepts are maybe similar, but the way they’re getting it done is a little bit different. It’s neat talking to growers to see what their needs are.”