Precision Pays

In this edition of the Precision Pays Podcast, sponsored by Ag Leader Technology, we listen in on one of the sessions at the recent International Conference on Precision Agriculture held in Denver, Colorado.

Dr. Ken Cassman with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Energy Sciences Research told the standing-room-only crowd that if you look at the past 40 years of farming and extrapolate those increases to the next 40 years, food production will still fall short, putting the world’s population … estimated to be 9.2 billion people by the year 2050 … and the world’s food supply on a crash course. He says estimates are that agriculture will have to increase production by 1.75 percent a year. Right now the numbers are closer to about a 1.3 percent increase. And Cassman says world agriculture will have to meet that increasing demand without negatively impacting the water supplies, nutrients, and wildlife of this planet.

So what’s the solution? Increased biotechnology to get more out of crops? Cassman says while biotechnology has increased yields somewhat, there’s no good, hard scientific evidence it will be able to meet the growing demands. He believes the real solution is meeting a food crop’s true genetic potential through something he calls Ecological Intensification.

It’s a fascinating conversation, and you can hear more of it in the player below below. Precision Pays Podcast

You can subscribe to the Precision Pays Podcast here.

Joe Nichols has evolved from watching his parents lose their farm when he was 17, to building a highly diversified 19,000-acre farm near Cadiz, KY. A recent story in theleafcronicle.com offers a fascinating look at his Seven Springs Farms. In that piece he highlights his precision farming emphasis on input savings as well as environmental protection.

He makes extensive use of precision farming technology. For instance, he uses variable rate planting, determined by soil type. “Soil type reflects the water holding capacity of the soil,” he says.

“Some soils are more productive than others, and the more productive soils get the higher plant populations. In sports terms, we play defense with our less productive fields and play offense with our more productive soils.”

He also uses global positioning and auto-steering on his equipment for swath control during planting, spraying and applying fertilizer. “This cuts down on over applying and wasting money,” he says. “We strive to protect the environment and be the best stewards of the land and water that we can be.”

As a result of his success as a row crop farmer, Nichols has been selected as the 2010 Kentucky winner of the Swisher Sweets/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year award.

“The goal I started with was to build an operation from scratch that could someday be viewed as one of the best, well-managed farming operations in North America,” he says. “This overarching goal is what drives me each day.”

Read the entire story.

If you have an iPhone and would like to get Precision Pays posts fast and easy on it, there’s now an app for that. ZimmComm New Media this week introduced the Agwired iPhone app that allows quick access to all of ZimmComm’s on-line publications, including Precision Pays. The app is now available for iPhone users to download, free of charge, in the Apple iTunes store.

The app offers one-touch access to all the latest news and information in the agribusiness and agricultural marketing world posted on Agwired.com, including audio, photos and video, and connections to other ZimmComm news sites. The AgWired App features a news tab drop down menu to select ZimmComm News Network feeds as well as individual news on AgWired.com by category.

ZimmComm owns and operates four web-based news sites that are now accessible from the new iPhone app: Agwired, focused on news from the world of agribusiness; Domestic Fuel, which is all about renewable energy – from ethanol and biodiesel to wind and solar; World Dairy Diary for the dairy industry; and Precision Pays, which focuses on information about precision agriculture technology.

The technology of precision agriculture has long outpaced the agronomics needed to prove its investment value, but we’re a lot closer today than we were 10 years ago.

I read a recent piece by DTN agronomist Dan Davidson, written during the recent International Conference on Precision Ag in Denver, Colo. He stated, “But what is interesting is how the use of yield monitor data, grid soil sampling and variable fertilizer application hasn’t changed much in two decades with only about 20% adoption. But the introduction of lightbar navigation (80+% adoption), assisted steering and section control really showed farmers that there were benefits from adopting the right technology.”

Sure, this is oversimplification of a lot of complex factors, but we’re also dealing with a larger percentage of farmers near, at, or beyond retirement age who, most often, seek simplicity and reduced investment. One look at the light-speed adoption of glyphosate-resistant crops is one example this simplicity model. (Although that simplicity is now resulting in greater management due to resistant weeds.)

Yes, precision farming technology is complex, and turning data into sound management practices that improve the bottom line often takes hired experts, in the same vein as why crop scouts are hired. But make no mistake, the profitability of certain technologies has improved dramatically in the past 10 years. It just takes hard work by a grower to find what can pay on a given farm.

Growers wouldn’t pay $300 for a unit of seed corn if they didn’t see the value. They just have to work harder and smarter when it comes to investing in precision agriculture technology. But that process is getting easier.

Are you navigating your precision agriculture technologies and using data to their fullest extent? A new three-day program offered by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, Precision Agriculture Practicum, is designed to help participants gain practical experience using their own field data in hands-on exercises. And you’ll have the opportunity to network with each other while collaborating on team projects.

Who should attend?
- Farmer operators wishing to get more return on their precision ag dollar investment.
- Crop consultants and industry agronomists who desire to provide more accurate information and better service to their customers.
- Corporate industry and government agency personnel needing to know and understand the technology being used in today’s production agriculture.
- Precision ag instructors.

The inaugural Late Season Session is scheduled for August 31 through September 2 at the UNL Ag Research & Development Center near Mead, Neb. Curriculum includes:
• Introduction to equipment used at UNL’s Agricultural
Research and Development Center and site-specific
management capacity; introduction to case study
fields
• Entry points to GPS auto-guidance, yield monitoring
progressing to yield mapping, Google Earth, aerial
imagery, county soil survey, Web Soil Survey, recordkeeping
• GPS principles
• Yield monitoring/mapping principles; data filtering
• Variable rate technology and control systems
optimizing autosteer and swath control.
• On-the-go soil sensing
• Collection of active crop canopy sensor data
• Develop N recommendations
• Aerial and satellite imagery
• Group exercises

Winter Session is scheduled for December 2010, with date and location yet to be determined.

Learn more at http://ardc.unl.edu/precisionagpracticum/

Enrollment is limited so act soon!

After a season spent trying to protect yield, we all know the view from the combine seat is judgment day for hybrids, varieties and assorted management decisions. Watching that yield monitor as you open up fields gets more focused viewership than the alma mater versus the big rival on a football Saturday.

Like flat screen TVs, precision ag monitors keep getting better with more features. Thanks to software improvements, you can even watch yields as they shift among hybrid locations in the field. Ag Leader recently upgraded their SMS desktop software so it can import planting data from various planter monitor brands to export as reference files to the INTEGRA display.

“The SMS software’s ability to translate data from almost any brand of planter monitor and export it into our INTEGRA display is a great tool, as it allows the varieties to show up as different colors during harvest on the display, as well as to be used for variety tracking,” says Corey Weddle, director of software solutions for Ag Leader.

Before, if two monitors were used to plant and only one of those monitors is used for harvest, you couldn’t combine the planting data from both monitors into one. “SMS Basic and SMS Advanced Version 10.0 software can handle that task,” he says. “And it’s a simple, straight forward process to export the data.”

Read more about it here: http://precisionpays.com/2010/07/watch-hybrid-and-variety-harvest-results-in-real-time/

Visit these links for more information.

SMS Software http://www.agleader.com/products/software/

INTEGRA http://www.agleader.com/products/integra/

Yield Monitoring http://www.agleader.com/products/yield-monitor/

Special coverage of two recent Precision Ag Expo days, in Casselton and Dickenson, N. Dak., has been documented by Farm & Ranch Guide–and the webpage includes educational videos of numerous presentations. Both field days were hosted by North Dakota State University Extension Service.

You can learn about site specific hardware, history of GPS, GPS system choices, accuracy of GPS, LIDAR technology and drainage, satellite imagery, precision ag adoption in ND, and much more.

Check it out!!

Ag Leader expands on its mobile SMS software platform to make it work on larger-screen portable PC devices for field data capture.

SMS Mobile PC is the latest way to utilize SMS Mobile software. This newest SMS software product enables the support of SMS Mobile for portable PC devices, including netbooks, tablets and laptop computers; the product can be utilized on any device running a Windows operating system – XP, Vista, or Windows 7.

SMS Mobile PC offers another way for growers to collect information in the field that can flow between their mobile device and their SMS desktop software. Utilizing SMS Mobile on a netbook, tablet or laptop gives users the ability to see more information on one screen.

“SMS Mobile PC puts SMS Mobile on a larger screen so you can adjust the size of windows and their location on the screen to match the way you want to work,” says Corey Weddle, Director of Software Solutions. “The new portable PC device support allows for higher screen resolution, larger buttons, faster processing and more memory than the traditional SMS Mobile PDA version.”

SMS Mobile PC provides five field operations in which a user can record data: Boundary, Soil Sampling, Crop Scouting, Coverage Logging and General Logging. Ag Leader Technology offers industry leading customer support, and all SMS products are backed by our software-dedicated support team.

This morning’s opening session of the 10th International Conference on Precision Agriculture (ICPA) was certainly a good one, as attendees heard that while the world’s farmers have increased the rate of growth of the food they produce, the current increase doesn’t match the rise in the human population and its rising incomes expected by the year 2050 when it’s expected that we’ll share this world with 9.2 billion people.

Dr. Ken Cassman with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Energy Sciences Research told the standing-room-only crowd that without negatively impacting some of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems – the rain forests, wetlands, and grassland savannahs – the current rate of production growth won’t meet the rising demand. He says a process of increasing yields and reducing agriculture’s “footprint” is necessary: a process he calls “ecological intensification (EI).” And he believes precision agriculture could play a key role in that process.

“The buffer between proper management and poor management narrows, that is, the margin for error becomes smaller in terms of what helps the crop or what hurts the crop. So your precision of management becomes the single most important factor in helping farmers achieve yields near the yield potential ceiling.”

Cassman says the goal is to achieve 80 percent of a crop’s genetic yield potential while not increasing the impact that crop has on the environment. He says while biotechnology might help get us there, there is no magic bullet. It will take a combination of new technologies and techniques to hit that potential.

And a man who shared the stage with Cassman during the opening session believes we cannot play down the importance of testing and monitoring of fields to make sure the crops are living up to their potential. Dr. William Raun with Oklahoma State University also made a pitch for funding of extension services so that testing can take place.

“Extension is obviously important to us. We cannot just do research. We’ve got to have thousands of enrich strips and ramps out there in the fields and investing in that extension so farmers can see it.” And he adds that the numbers and formulas are out there to best forecast what can happen in a field. We just need to make sure it’s measured. “Yield potential can be predicted.”

It really was a great session. Because of the length of it, I can’t post all of the audio here, but I am going to let you hear the question and answer session after Cassman’s and Raun’s presentation. You’ll also hear from Dr. Raj Khosla during this segment. You can download or listen to this session at ICPA here: Opening Session Questions and Answers

I’ve also posted the day’s pictures on the ICPA Photo Album

Long known as the pioneer of the yield monitor, Ag Leader continues to gives farmers greater features as they roll out new hybrid/variety maps for its INTEGRA display. Now farmers can see hybrid and variety results in real time during harvest.

“For a long time growers have used our yield monitor to compare varieties at harvest. However, the field had to be harvested with the same display that planted the field to see the variety map in real time,” says New Business Development Manager, Roger Zielke. “I’m happy to say this added feature gives our customers a solution, regardless of their planting display. SMS-compatible data can be read into the software to create a reference file. That file is then loaded on to the INTEGRA display to show the variety map at harvest.”

Using SMS software to generate variety maps helps farming operations with multiple precision ag displays or mixed fleets of precision ag equipment in the operation.

“We take great pride in the number of precision ag products SMS can read and manage data from. Now we can integrate variety map data from multiple collection devices and make those maps available on the INTEGRA display to use in harvest operations,” says Corey Weddle, Director of Software Solutions. “Users with the following precision ag equipment brands can take advantage of this feature: Ag Leader, AGCO ISO-based displays, Case IH, DICKEY-john, Flexicoil, John Deere, KINZE, Mid-Tech, New Holland, Raven, RDS, Trimble and any ISO11783 display using the XML file format. That’s an extensive list; we’re excited to facilitate this data exchange among multiple brands in order to help growers get the most benefit from their precision ag equipment.”

This new feature is available in the recent INTEGRA firmware release, Version 1.5; SMS Basic or SMS Advanced Version 10.0 (released in May) is required to export hybrid/variety reference maps to the INTEGRA display. The update is available for existing INTEGRA owners to download at www.agleader.com, under “Customer Support”.

Given the cost of inputs, the drip, drip, drip of nozzles after you shut them off can be costly. Just ask Arkansas custom applicator Bill French.

“When I used to shut the boom off, the nozzles didn’t shut off immediately,” French said, who custom sprays about 50,000 acres of rice and soybeans in northeast Arkansas. “There was still product coming out of the tips, and that’s just wasting money.”

To overcome the frustrating problem of continued spraying after the boom has been switched off, French started using TeeJet Technologies’ Flow Back valves.

“The shut off time when the nozzles actually quit spraying went from 5 to 8 seconds to about 1 second when we started using the Flow Back valves,” he said. “This reduces chemical waste tremendously and saves our customers a lot of cost. There is no doubt it saves chemical.”

Sprayers with standard valves trap pressure in the boom when they are switched off. As a result, the boom continues spraying for several seconds before completely shutting off. The technology behind Flow Back valves includes an extra passage that allows boom pressure to be dissipated immediately – this passage allows spray solution to return to the tank to relieve that pressure, and is the key to fast shut off at the boom.  The boom remains full of liquid and spraying resumes immediately when the valves are switched back on.

“Due to the rapid shut off of spray tips when the boom sections are shut off, Flow Back valves eliminate product waste and improve sprayer accuracy by reducing skips, overlaps and re-sprays,” said Pat Maney, wet products business manager with TeeJet Technologies. “Applicators can spray to the end of the row while minimizing the overlap that can occur in the end rows.” Without Flow Back valves, operators must try to compensate for shut off delays of five to 10 seconds or more, which can lead to over application or costly re-sprays.

Flow Back valves are compatible with all levels of sprayer control systems, from simple to sophisticated, and require no special wiring or plumbing. They also are an excellent companion to automatic boom section control systems. The compact, electrically-actuated Flow Back valves are available in three product platforms – 430 FB, 450 FB and 460 FB ‑ each rated for different pressures and flows.

The 10th International Conference on Precision Agriculture (ICPA) has kicked off at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center in Denver and runs through Wednesday, July 21, 2010.

Throughout the day, hundreds of research scientists, producers, technology company representatives, equipment manufacturers, input dealers, agronomic consultants, software developers, educators, government personnel and policymakers have been pouring into the Mile High City from 40 different countries to look back on the past 20 years of precision ag innovations and to work together on the future of maximizing the potential of the world’s farmlands.

At the opening reception tonight, I caught up with Dr. Raj Khosla, the chairperson of the 10th ICPA and a professor at Colorado State University. He told me with 300-500 participants from such a wide variety of places around the world, he expects a large part of the conversation will be on the hot topic of food security.

“Precision agriculture has been mentioned as one of the soultions in meeting food security. Populations are increasing. People’s eating habits are changing.” And to meet those increasing demands, Khosla says they have to figure out how to translate some of the precision ag techniques used in the U.S. and apply them to lesser-developed countries. He says meeting the food demands of these growing countries could literally transform those societies.

“When you’re tummy is hungry is hard to listen to anything else other than feeding itself. There’s an opportunity for precision ag to contribute to lesser developed countries, smaller field sizes by coupling the technology and the [large labor markets].” He says it is just as important to use the same amount of labor to grow the larger quantities of food so precision agriculture doesn’t end up putting those workers out of jobs.

Khosla says precision agriculture is putting the right inputs in the right place, at the right time, and in the right manner. It’s a great conversation, and download or listen to Khosla’s interview at ICPA here: Dr. Raj Khosla

And check out the ICPA Photo Album

For farmers who deal with the planting and spraying challenges of farming on contours, terraces and hills, there’s a new guidance pattern from Ag Leader Technology that offers help.

Called SmartPath, this new ‘drive and guide’ pattern is designed for fields beyond the straight and flat, and it doesn’t require the traditional set-up using beginning and end points.

“If you have farmed contoured fields, you know there is no sequential pattern that is followed; it’s much more random. With SmartPath, once you drive the first pass, all subsequent passes are GPS-guided to follow the previous path,” says Matt Leinen, product manager with Ag Leader. “This pattern will make planter row shutoff or sprayer boom shutoff technology very effective, especially when dealing with the convergence of many point rows.”

While this type of pattern isn’t unique in the industry, Leinen says their technology is designed to follow the best path. “The challenge with this type of pattern is the convergence of numerous paths which come together that are unevenly spaced. We designed the SmartPath to select the right path.”

This pattern is available with any of Ag Leader’s manual guidance, assisted steering or automated steering products, including the INTEGRA and EDGE displays, as well as the OnTrac2 and ParaDyme steering systems.

SmartPath is joining a family of guidance patterns available with Ag Leader’s guidance and steering, including Straight AB, A+, Identical Curve, Adaptive Curve and Pivot. It is available in the following firmware releases: Version 1.5 of the INTEGRA display and Version 3.5 of the EDGE display. Updates can be downloaded from www.agleader.com, under ‘Customer Support’. http://www.agleader.com/customer-support/

Visit these links for more information.
SmartPath http://www.agleader.com/media-center/
Steering products http://www.agleader.com/products/steering/

“Right time, right place, right rate are the key elements of precision agriculture,” said Phil Howard, Southern States manager of precision agriculture, in it’s third quarter 2010 newsletter. Precision agriculture allows farmers to make better informed management decisions and improve input allocation, thus improving efficiency, lowering production costs and increasing profits.

Over 580,000 acres are in the Southern States precision agriculture program. Howard believes that this number will continue to increase. “Precision agriculture tools will help producers maximize yields and protect the environment, and that’s good for the future of agriculture.

Another component of precision agriculture is called Variable Rate Technologies (VRT). VRT involves applicators that can automatically change their application rates in response to their relative position. VRT systems are available for applying a variety of materials including granular and liquid fertilizers, pesticides, seed and irrigation water. VRT applicators consist of a controller that adjusts the substance flow rate, a positioning system, and a map which details the preferred application rates for an individual field.

VRT controllers are comparable to those used on many sprayers, spreaders and other agricultural equipment. On conventional machines, the operator controls the application rate by selecting the desired rate from the console panel in the cab. By integrating GPS and geographic information system (GIS) databases into the system, application rate changes can be made automatically as the vehicle crosses the field.

Southern States has made a substantial investment in precision agriculture equipment, Howard said. Providing information and services to the producer through precision agriculture will maximize his potential for production and will provide the most economical return.

Southern States offers precision agriculture services in 31 locations with a goal of expanding services to all major crop production areas within the next two years. Precision agriculture services offered include geo-referencing field boundaries and site-specific soil testing, electronic site specific nutrient fertility recommendations by field and electronic variable rate nutrient application maps utilized to variably apply the site-specific fertilizer or lime recommendations

Custom variable rate nutrient fertilizer and lime application with dry and liquid applicators is also available. Southern States can also develop a recommended electronic variable rate crops seeding map to be utilized by the producer to plant crops by field location.

The economic factor driving precision agriculture is the savings realized when crop inputs are applied only when needed and where needed. But another important benefit to consider is that by utilizing such site-specific nutrient management, precision agriculture also reduces excess run-off and improves the environmental sustainability of crop production.

The Alabama Precision Agriculture Team is sponsoring and participating in the International Conference on Precision Agriculture to be held July 18-21, 2010 in Denver Colorado.

Team members will present on various topics including Profitability of RTK and Its Influence on Peanut Production, Adoption and Use of Precision Agriculture Technologies and Proper Implementation of Precision Agricultural Technologies for Conducting On-farm Research. In addition the Alabama Precision Agriculture Program will sponsor an exhibit at the conference featuring current projects and outreach efforts of the program.

For further information on presentations provided by team members click on the individual titles below. Visit the Alabama Precision Ag Website at www.AlabamaPrecisionAgOnline.com for current precision ag information and updates.

A Case Study for Variable-Rate Seeding of Corn and Cotton in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama

Adoption and Use of Precision Agriculture Technologies by Practitioners

Application Rate Stability When Implementing Automatic Section Control Technology on Agricultural Sprayers

Determination of Crop Injury From Aerial Application of Glyphosate Using Vegetation Indices and Geostatistics

Economic Analysis of Auto-Swath Control for Alabama Crop Production

Precision Agriculture Education: Using Social Media

Profitability of RTK and Its Influence on Peanut Production

Proper Implementation of Precision Agricultural Technologies for Conducting Field-Scale Research

Tip Flow Uniformity When Using Different Automatic Section Control Technologies During Field Operations

Variable Rate Application of Nematicides on Cotton Fields: A Promising Site-Specific Management Strategy