Innovation

SwathSmart Guidance Lightbar Receives 2003 FinOvation Award

Raven's SwathSmart Guidance Lightbar won a FinOvation Award presented by Farm Industry News. This award recognizes the most innovative agricultural products from the past year where winners are chosen as being the most innovative, based on reader interest.

Out of the hundreds of new products described in the pages of Farm Industry News, 21 in particular grabbed the interest of FIN readers. Maybe it was a product that incorporated new technology. Or a new improvement to a standard tool. Whatever the innovation, readers wanted to know more. Farm Industry News analyzed all of their reader inquires from the previous year to select these 21 intriguing products as our FinOvation award recipients for 2003. Together they represent the best of new products for the farm.

About SwathSmart

Sales of the SwathSmart guidance lightbar from Raven Industries are growing dramatically as farmers seek ways to precisely drive application equipment day and night. SwathSmart, introduced a year ago, helps operators keep from overlapping swaths on crops from corn and soybeans to rice and cotton. It also works on many different patterns, including parallel, contour, center pivot, row crop and double headland.

The key features of the new lightbar are simple installation, simple operation and flexibility, according to precision products manager Paul Welbig. Growers mark the endpoints of the first swath and the system takes over. Removable cables make the system easy to move to another machine. In the past year, Raven has added other options to SwathSmart, including tilt compensation for driving on side hills and an on-screen mapping option.