Precision Soil Knowledge With Simple Tool

Kurt LawtonGeneral

The last thing on a farmers mind right now–during planting frenzy time–is thinking about what he is doing to the soil. It’s all about getting the seed in the ground.

But as no-till farmers know–and strip-till farmers are learning–the best seedbed occurs in mellow, uncompacted soil. 

Successful Farming’s Agriculture Online has a great story on how spring is the best time to check compaction–and how to use a simple tool, the shovel, to assess fields. The piece quotes Kansas State soil management specialist DeAnn Presley, who drives home key points:

  • Assess fields when entire soil profile is moist but not saturated
  • Amount of soil water present is critical for compaction potential
  • Penetrometers best mimic root penetration potential
  • Best cure for compaction is not driving on soils that are too wet
  • Shallow surface compaction can be reduced by adopting GPS-based auto steering to create controlled traffic patterns.

Perhaps someday we’ll have a precision farming compaction data layer on field maps so we can truly learn how bad compaction is on yields.

Hands-free Steering with AutoFarm & Raven

Kurt LawtonGeneral

Raven Viper Pro owners can move up to GPS hands-free steering with AutoFarm‘s new FarmPRO DGPS or RTK steering kits.

Using either WAAS, OmniSTAR XP or HP correction, the FarmPRO RTK allows sub-inch accurate vehicle placement with trip after trip and season after season repeatability.

Both Viper Pro-to-FarmPRO upgrades, DGPS or RTK, include the patented AutoFarm multi-antenna roof module with Logic7D™ technology. Logic7D technology is the key to precise position and orientation for sub-inch accurate vehicle placement. It also offers unique adaptive control capabilities that calibrate to the dynamics of specific vehicles, whether sprayers and spreaders, tractors or combines. 

“When you combine the leader in hands-free GPS steering with the leader in application control, you get the FarmPRO system; the total solution to managing productivity and profitability,” says John Bressler, AutoFarm Senior Marketing Manager. 


Precision Irrigation from Valley

Kurt LawtonCompany Announcement, Equipment, GPS, Irrigation

Just as GPS-guided auto steer has helped plant super straight rows, producers can now irrigate in the same straight lines to minimize variances in water application to help maximize yields.

Valley Irrigation now offers GPS Guidance for linear irrigation equipment. Here’s what two farmers said about their trials with this new precision agriculture technology.

Leonard Water Services, the local Valley dealer serving the Abilene, Texas area, had firsthand experience with Valley GPS Guidance on linear irrigation equipment last summer, as part of Valley Irrigation field trials. Jim Leonard, partner, Leonard Water Services, liked what he saw during the trial and agreed with LaRue that GPS Guidance reduces overwatering.

“When you reverse linears at the end of the field, there’s a tendency for non-GPS guidance options to overcompensate the steering of the linear machine during the repositioning, and that can lead to overwatering some parts of the field,” Leonard said. “But GPS Guidance from Valley held the linear to a much more accurate position. We didn’t see any overwatering. Everything about the operation was positive. We haven’t seen a drawback yet and will likely install GPS Guidance on more linear irrigation equipment that our dealership sells in the future.”

Valley GPS Guidance works with virtually all linear irrigation equipment and is compatible with John Deere™ Starfire™ RTK.

That compatibility was important to Steve Coester, farm manager of Ak-Chin Farm in Maricopa, Ariz., who also participated in the GPS Guidance field trials. In addition to eliminating the need for above-ground cable, he liked how Valley GPS Guidance worked with the farm’s current setup. “We use GPS in all our equipment,” said Coester. “So it was easy to integrate GPS Guidance with our operation, and the programming was simple.”

GPS Guidance for linear irrigation equipment is the latest GPS product innovation from Valley Irrigation. In 2008, Valley introduced GPS Ready control panels for center pivot and linear irrigation equipment that provide growers with another choice to determine field position by utilizing the accuracy of GPS technology. LaRue said Valley is currently field testing GPS Guidance for use with corner pivot irrigation. Pending trial results, the company anticipates GPS Guidance for corner pivots will be available in 2010.

GPS Guidance is available through Valley dealers. Producers should contact their local Valley Irrigation dealer for more information about Valley linear irrigation equipment and GPS Guidance options.

Learn Precision Ag Technology at New Website

Kurt LawtonCompany Announcement, Education, Farmers, Trimble

PrecsionAg WORKS, the new website developed by The PrecisionAg Institute (a part of Meister Media Worldwide), is designed to help educate the agricultural community on the benefits and uses of precision agriculture technology.

The site features an array of valuable content to help growers understand the technology including: 

– A glossary of precision agriculture terms and concepts

– Research statistics on cost savings and return on investment, through use of precision technology

– Articles and information on getting started and advancing with the technology 

– PrecisionAg TV, a video library in which growers, precision experts and practitioners share perspectives and success stories

– Links to partnering companies, informational resources and industry contacts 

“Through advocacy, education and research, the Institute intends to advance precision technology and its efficiency, stewardship and profitability on farms around the world,” says Institute Director K. Elliott Nowels. “This new web site will be a place where the larger ag community can go to get general information on the benefits and uses of the technology.” 

The PrecisionAg Institute incorporates a variety of integrated media offerings to help precision agriculture practitioners better understand and use precision agriculture technology.

The institute also recently announced the addition of Trimble Navigation as a Precision Partner and supporter of their effort to educate farmers and others.

Don’t forget to continue to visit us often here at Precision.AgWired.com, as we keep you up to date on the best of the precision agriculture world.

Have a great Easter Weekend!

New Crop Forecast Tool for Precision Agriculture

Kurt LawtonAerial Imagery, Company Announcement, Industry News, Satellite

Billed as the true next generation agricultural information product, CropForecaster service combines satellite imagery with biomass and leaf area variables. It can produce daily imagery that tracks and predicts crop development and growth from planting to harvest.

CropForecaster is the combined work of ZedX, a Pennsylvania-based leading developer of internet agricultural decision support services, and France-based Infoterra, a subsidiary of EADS Astrium company who is a leading global provider of geo-information products and services. Together these companies have over 40 years of high level information technology experience in agriculture.

Why CropForecaster? Costs of advanced satellite imagery have kept it out-of-reach for most agricultural uses. Likewise, use of advanced agrometeorological models has been limited by spatial data availability and uncertainties. CropForecaster overcomes the limits of these two approaches and transforms them into a powerful decision support service.

This service will provide an unprecedented day-by-day, detailed quantification of crop production. The service is designed to keep you focused and informed of current and future state of a crop.

For more details on what this service can offer, check out this presentation. It outlines various maps — from planting date and progress, to acreage, crop stage, crop condition, yield and more.

Precision Farming Data Will Pay

Kurt LawtonCorn, Farmers, GPS

The early pioneers of precision agriculture technology were often frustrated–not unlike the initial stages of any technology. The data gathered could produce impressive yield maps, but the knowledge base to glean better management decisions from them was lacking.

Today, those pioneering growers have a treasure trove of data that can possibly be manipulated into zones–leading to improved management decisions. Corn & Soybean Digest magazine recently profiled Wisconsin grower Mike Cerny, who has GIS-mapped data since 1994, after buying his first yield monitor in 1987.

Cerny worked with University of Wisconsin agronomist, Joe Lauer, to layer soil data, nutrient maps, elevation maps and real-time planting maps to analyze his 12 years of data. Then they developed 50-meter data cells within 300 acres to find ways to improve his bottom line.

“We wanted to find out if, by doing this, we could predict what the yield would be in the sixth year in each cell,” Lauer says. “Bottom line, we found that we could predict the next year’s performance.”

In corn, for example, the six-year analysis showed a consistent, 26-bu. difference between high-yielding and low-yielding cells. That was a bit of a surprise, Cerny says, because the cropland was “all one soil type, with little elevation variance and fairly uniform fertility. That’s not where you’d expect to see much difference, and yet we did.” So these stable-, high- or low-yielding zones could be candidates for special management, Lauer says.

Cerny is using the data to vary corn plant populations within fields. “We do know that plant density influences yield dramatically,” Lauer says. “And we know there are different optimum populations in different yielding environments.”

What decisions helped Cerny improve efficiency using precision ag technology?

  • Changing seeding rates given high and low producing areas (but not sure if adding profits yet)
  • Adding tile (big profit improver)
  • Variable rate fertilizer (good environmental benefits, and perhaps added profits, but jury still out)

For all the details, check out this valuable story.

The Future of Automated Crop Production

Kurt LawtonEquipment, GPS, Research

 

A team of robots sharing watering and harvesting tasks. Photo from MIT.

A team of robots sharing watering and harvesting tasks. Photo from MIT.

An autonomous gardener robot that uses sensors and computers to water, fertilize and harvest fruits and vegetables is under development by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students of computer science and artificial intelligence labs (CSAIL).

While the long-term goal of this specific research project is to develop such automation for greenhouses, imagine the uses for monitoring fields of grain. This type of precision agriculture system would deliver the right amount of water and nutrients exactly when needed, as well as harvest at the perfect time.

I wrote an in-depth piece about this wild world of robotics in agriculture, which you can read about in an upcoming issue of Successful Farming magazine–which we’ll showcase here on Precision.AgWired.com, too.

Are You Using Your Precision Farming Data?

Kurt LawtonEducation, Equipment, Farmers, GPS

Remember your first yield monitor, when all you did with it was watch the numbers spin wildly across your fields. Heck, even when one took the next step to map the data, few knew how to use it to make improvements.

Using technology to it’s fullest extent takes time, education, practice, and a good advisor. And the technology of precision agriculture is a prime example.

At a recent grower meeting in Wall Lake, Ia., it was noted that nearly 40% of Iowa farmers have access to variable rate seeding technology, but only about half of them use it, according to Monsanto’s John Jansen, quoted in a Farm News report.

“Farmers also continue to struggle with managing the data from their yield monitors in a meaningful way.

“Based on what farmers tell me, seven out of 10 download information from their monitor to their home computer, but only about one in 10 actually do anything with the data,” Jansen said. “However, accounting for different soil types in a field and getting the right planting populations will be the key to boosting yields in the years ahead.”

As precision farming continues to evolve, better in-season satellite technology will help farmers maximize their crops’ potential during the growing season, Jansen added, who noted that Monsanto is entering the imagery technology business by working with Colorado-based EarthMap Solutions. “New expertise in geographic information systems and remote sensing will help us improve seed production and provide better agronomic information to growers.”


Extreme Precision Application Needed

Kurt LawtonEquipment, Farmers

Precision farming technology that controls sections of your planter, sprayer and fertilizer spreader are key to the “extreme precision” needs of farmers, says Iowa grower Clay Mitchell, as reported recently in Farm Industry News.

This young farmer, who avidly practices many forms of precision agriculture and blogs about it at The Mitchell Farm, is not a fan of variable-rate technologies yet. He says there’s a greater need to improve uniform application first, especially with fertilizer applicators.

In an article titled “Future of Farming Technology,” he writes that variable-rate application “is and will be for a long time, hampered by voodoo yield-response estimates that can cause more harm than good.” He says there are notable exceptions, such as pivot irrigation field corners, but mostly, uniform applications are far more desirable.

Technology trends that Mitchell sees as valuable include:

  • Technologies that will detect, map and replace tile lines
  • Auto steering will become standard
  • Individual planter row and nozzle control need to be standard
  • Water management will undergo a revolution change
  • Data transfer from vehicle to computer will become automated
  • More operating data will be captured and mapped, such as fuel use
  • Communications tools and monitoring technology will become wireless

New Map & Guidance Display from Leica

Kurt LawtonCompany Announcement, Displays, Equipment, Leica Geosystems

Get accurate real-time visual display of every field application with the new iNEX Maping & Guidance Display from Leica Geosystems. This large touch-screen display works with the Leica mojoRTK auto-steer system, or can be used as stand-alone guidance system with most GPS receivers.

The display comes with field data management software to store multiple vehicle setups. It records data from all fields, which can be easily transferred to a computer. In addition to AB parallel guidance, you also get A+ Heading and Adaptive Curve options for year-to-year repeatability.

“Combining mapping, data management, and auto-section control technology in the iNEX display with the Leica mojoRTK has given us the opportunity to reach more of the market with the tools they need to save on input costs right now,” said Trevor Mecham, North American business manager for Leica’s Agriculture Group. “We remain committed to building tools and technology that are easy to use and fit the needs of U.S. farmers.”

To ensure that customers only pay for the features they want and need, the Leica iNEX comes with a suite of standard guidance options, but offers optional upgrades. Those producers who require advanced guidance options or auto-section control can add just the options they need. Plus, when used with Leica’s mojoRTK, the iNEX can be upgraded remotely at any time via Leica Geosystems’ unique remote service and support tool – Virtual Wrench(TM).

Upgrade options for the iNEX include three advanced guidance options – Pivots, Contours and Replay. Replay is a guidance option unique to the iNEX that allows users to “replay” advanced guidance patterns on the most unique fields.

Additionally, auto-section control can be added to the iNEX display providing automatic on/off for spraying and planting applications.

Retail price is $4,995, and is available from Leica’s network of premium resellers.