Southeastern Cotton Ginners Staff were just some of the many talented instructors at the just concluded USDA/NCGA Cotton Ginners School in Stoneville last week. One of topics that was on the plate for Continuing Education section of the school was tracking and management of round modules using some of the tools that John Deere has in place for producers in their Harvest ID (HID) system.

This was a topic that we identified last year as important to a number of our members based on one of the presentations at last year’s Gin School. Since that time we have attempted to bring the ginning community, John Deere, and EWR/eCotton together along with Cotton Incorporated and USDA to work on ways to better track and use the data that is built in to the picker and module. There is so much data that could be tapped into, we are just beginning to scratch the surface on what can be done. Imagination is the limiting factor at this point.

The Annual Meeting last January featured some of these players in a panel discussion that was very well received. We have continued to work with the industry to extend a lot of the progress we have made in a relatively short time.

Even though we have made a lot of progress, it is has become quite evident that while there are 600 gins in the country, there may be 800 ways to handle modules and module data. The gin management software developers like EWR are trying to see if they can make their software fit the ways we handle modules and marry that with Deere’s data for modules that have been made.  EWR is specifically looking for a few testers to look at and use their module management developments along with the integration they have worked on with John Deere’s HID system. If you are interested in using Deere’s HID and its integration with eCotton along with tracking and dispatching modules through RFID barcodes etc. Tom McCune would like to speak to you. You can contact Tom through your eCotton rep or by email by clicking on his name above.

Additionally we also encourage you to go to Cotton Inc.’s page and read about some of the projects they’ve been working on with USDA to help track round modules better. You can find the app and article by going to the Cotton Cultivated front page and finding the app at the bottom and by following this link that takes you to a download tool that CI’s been developing.

This is an ongoing process and these researchers and developers can use all the input you can provide. While space to participate in the EWR/eCotton project is somewhat limited, we truly encourage you to contact Tom to see about being a test site.

DSF