Hemisphere GPS has announced that its GPS precision agriculture products are compatible with Ag Leader’s SMS Basic and SMS Advanced mapping software solutions.

The company’s Ground Agriculture Group designs and manufactures products for precision farming and agriculture. The Ground GPS products and applications enable users to steer and spray crops with greater precision and control, said company sources.

Hemisphere’s Air Agriculture Group provides precision aerial GPS products for farmers, forestry workers and firefighters. Applications include row crop spraying, pest control, forestry and fighting fires.

“We are very pleased to be expanding for our customers the use of the valuable data our systems collect. Ag Leader SMS Basic and SMS Advanced software will now be compatible with Hemisphere GPS Outback Guidance and aerial application products,” said John Bohlke, Hemisphere GPS director of product marketing.

He explained that farmers using Hemisphere’s guidance and auto-steering technology can now easily move their field data to their SMS desktop software for increased efficiency and realize more revenue from every acre under cultivation. This compatibility with Ag leader’s solutions will further extend the value of Hemisphere products towards agriculture data management solutions.

Ag Leader’s SMS Basic and SMS Advanced version 9.5 which will be released in September this year will further add support for reading and writing to field formats used by Hemisphere GPS products like Outback 360, Outback Sts, Outback S3 and the Air M3 system. Besides data like coverage maps, as-applied rates, field boundaries, marks and guidance lines will also be supported, said official sources.

“Adding compatibility with Hemisphere GPS data file formats to SMS software is a natural fit given the number of Hemisphere GPS customers across North America who are collecting site specific data,” said Al Myers, president of Ag Leader.

“This also reinforces Ag Leader’s strategy on being compatible with a wide variety of equipment brands when it comes to supporting site specific data. With this new compatibility with Hemisphere GPS products, we can bring our combined value to the market place to offer a complete solution to our customers,” added Myers.

Hemisphere GPS designs and manufactures GPS products which are required in positioning, guidance, and machine control applications in agriculture, marine and other markets. For purposes of precision GPS in ground agriculture Hemisphere owns brands like Outback Guidance and BEELINE.