USDA scientists are studying how UAVs may be used to keep an eye on changing land-use patterns across vast tracts of western rangeland.

Ranchers, government agencies and private land managers often need to survey vast, remote rangelands to see how they are being altered by floods, forest fires or other events. Ground-based surveys can be costly and time-consuming. Satellite imagery is improving, but satellites can’t provide the resolution needed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for its assessments of millions of acres of federally owned lands, or by private land owners who want to monitor erosion control, the creep of invasive species, or other land-use changes. UAVs allow operators to survey large areas whenever they want, such as immediately after a major rain storm or forest fire.

So researchers with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Jornada Experimental Range in Las Cruces, New Mexico are studying the potential effectiveness of a 20-pound UAV with a 6-foot wingspan that cruises 700 feet above the earth, collecting digital images.

In a study partially funded by BLM, the researchers took more than 400 aerial images of 700 acres in the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed in southwestern Idaho. They assembled the images into mosaics, determined the percentage of vegetation cover using image-processing techniques and compared the data to information collected with conventional ground-based techniques. In a second study, they analyzed the classification accuracy of different types of vegetation, such as mesquite and yucca plants, identified by a computer program designed to analyze mosaics assembled from hundreds of images taken during flights over tracts in Idaho and New Mexico.

Read more from ARS.

USDA has jointly patented the technology that can take an ordinary 12-megapixel camera sold without an internal filter that blocks near-infrared (NIR) light and then add a custom-made lens filter to block red light and transmit NIR.

The patented method allows photographing with light in the NIR, green and blue bands, which are used to measure the “greenness” of vegetation and extent of crop canopy cover. There is no need for further processing, so the images are available immediately upon landing. The cameras are also lighter and more compact than the traditional larger format cameras used for aerial infrared photography.

Read more from USDA-ARS.

In this month’s Precision Pays Podcast, sponsored by Ag Leader Technology, Jason explains the future of finding problems in our fields. 

You can subscribe to the Precision Pays Podcast here. The Precision Pays Podcast is sponsored by Ag Leader Technology.

Somehow Multi-Rotor Remote Sensing System (MRRSS) just doesn’t have quite the same ring as Superman, but these tiny remote-controlled, camera-equipped drones could give some farmers super powers to see their crops from a bird’s eye view. University researchers from Arkansas, Florida and Ohio are currently studying the applications of the system which consists of a six- to eight-rotor, remotely controlled helicopter that provides a stable platform for the off-the-shelf digital camera that sends back video and stills to the ground crew. The system includes image recognition software that can teach itself to recognize individual trees or plants and count them. With different sensors, the machine could potentially detect disease, irrigation or fertilizer issues, predict crop yields and more.

The idea for the system came from Reza Ehsani, Assistant Professor and Precision Agriculture Specialist with the University of Florida’s Citrus Research and Education Center. It’s powered by a lithium ion polymer battery and a basic unit costs from $7,000 to $10,000. Ehsani says it would be a great tool for citrus growers to use to combat citrus greening.

Arkansas researchers are interested in how the system could help row crop farmers and the project in that state is being funded partially by the state soybean board. In Oregon, nurseries and tree farms have the most interest.

CropScape provides data users access to a variety of new resources and information, including the 2010 cropland data layer (CDL) just released in conjunction with CropScape. The new service offers advanced tools such as interactive visualization, web-based data dissemination and geospatial queries and automated data delivery to systems such as Google Earth.

“CropScape delivers data visualization tools directly into the hands of the agricultural community without the need for specialized expertise, GIS software or high-end computers,” said Mark Harris, NASS Research and Development Division director. “This information can be used for addressing issues related to agricultural sustainability, land cover monitoring, biodiversity and extreme events such as flooding, drought and hail storm assessment.”

CropScape was developed in cooperation with the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va. The research and development of CropScape and the NASS partnership with George Mason University reflect NASS’s continued commitment to improve U.S. agricultural production, sustainability and food security.

Check it out here.

“We’ve said for a few years now that ‘accuracy is addictive.’ Well farmers are proving that as this has been a year driven by higher precision—a move to more RTK accuracy.”

The big deal. Darr cited the widespread nature of expanding RTK networks, both public and privately owned. “These networks are pushing us towards RTK becoming a standard commodity, which will help drive down the costs and give more growers the potential to achieve high-end accuracy. And that is a big deal.”

The CORS network has had a strong run over the past three years. Indiana is now online as the most recent, along with CORS networks in Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri. “I see this growth slowing down, but we’ll continue to see greater stabilization and improvement in the signals,” Darr says.

In the private sector, we’re seeing greater expansion from Trimble’s VRS network and from John Deere’s StarFire 450 MHz radio system, as well as other smaller companies building systems across the Midwest.

Crop sensing. Another big push is on to figure out how to use active crop sensing to provide financial benefit. “With the addition of Ag Leader’s OptRx system, along with the Greenseeker from Trimble and CropSpec from Topcon, growers have the potential to unlock another area of profitability. It’s not as simple as auto guidance, and it may not work for everyone,” Darr says.

This technology offers a natural fit in wheat, since growers are used to topdressing in the spring. “Anytime you can automate N applications, you’re looking at both economic and environmental benefits. A reduction in the over-application of N is a big deal,” Darr says.

“The challenge for Midwest corn growers is that not every producer uses sidedressed N when corn is 12 to 18 inches tall, which is where this technology needs to be used. So you’re asking growers to change production practices as well as adopt new technology, so these challenges will slow adoption. But it offers huge potential,” he adds.

The future. “If you look back 4 or 5 years, and think about the automation technology that has come out—from auto swath to auto steer—all the easy things, relatively speaking, have been automated. Future automation gets tougher. We now need to circle back to data and press that information into greater knowledge. That’s what we’re after. We must gain knowledge from all this data to improve our operations,” he says.

GPS World offers a look at their top five events in GPS/GNSS for 2010, so check it out, too. http://www.gpsworld.com/survey/top-5-events-gpsgnss-2010-a-year-end-review-10854

Visit these links for more information.

CORS Network
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/GoogleMap/CORS.shtml

Learn How CORS Network Can Fit Precision Farming
http://precisionpays.com/2010/01/learn-how-cors-network-can-fit-precision-farming/

Lessons in Differential Correction
http://www.agleader.com/2010/07/02/lessons-in-precision-ag-differential-correction-part-2/

RTK Network Options
http://farmindustrynews.com/precision-guidance/rtk-network-options

Ag Leader dealer locator
http://www.agleader.com/dealer-search/

One of the many exhibitors of precision technology at the NAAA Trade Show was AgSync. Their slogan is “It’s not just about maps anymore.”

Sales Manager Clay Rassi says the company offers everything from customer management to mapping to communicating work orders to creating missions and organizing the loads and efficiency of the airplanes and more. AgSync has expanded their product and services via integrated partnerships with companies like BASF Crop Protection. From a precision ag standpoint, their products help aerial applicators be more efficient while helping them make sure they’re in the right field and applying the right product.

Listen to Chuck Zimmerman interview Clay at NAAA here: Clay Rassi Interview

2010 NAAA Convention Photo Album

The TalkingFields initiative is now showing how to combine satellite observation with satellite navigation to benefit European farmers.
Sustainable food production and food security are critical challenges. TalkingFields will help by using precision farming methods to produce crops more efficiently. For instance, by optimising farmers’ use of fertiliser and giving early warning of plant disease risks, both costs and environmental impacts can be reduced.

“There are existing services variously employing Earth observation data, satellite navigation, farm management software and crop growth models, but TalkingFields is the first to combine them all,” said ESA’s Tony Sephton.

“We’re setting up an end-to-end service that is simple to use and sufficiently cost-effective to be self-sustaining.”

How does it work? The farmer requests the service for an area defined using satnav. Satellites gather information on the land’s potential – observations over several years can reveal variations in crop growth through soil changes – as well as current crop status.

These results are combined with information from field sensors such as weather conditions and soil moisture. The farmer adds in his own knowledge, and in return receives detailed satnav instructions on where and how much fertiliser to spray, for example.

A variety of satellites can be employed, although priority will be given to free data sources such as Landsat and ESA’s forthcoming Sentinel-2 satellites, due for launch in 2012.

“Ideally, we might have weekly satellite acquisitions, but cloud cover makes that unfeasible,” explained Dr Sephton.

“Instead, we need only two to four satellite images per growing season, which are fed into a sophisticated crop growth model.

“With TalkingFields the emphasis is on service: we’re not giving raw satellite data straight to farmers. Instead, we advise them directly on actions to be taken throughout the growing season.”

Read more

ARS researchers have developed a way to make more precise agricultural maps of fields from data generated by LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors to help farmers target more of their resources to the highest-yielding parts of their fields. Graphic courtesy of James M. McKinion, ARS.

Using an airplane with LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors is helping USDA-ARS researchers build better management zone maps that can accurately predict yields based on topography.

With the maps fed into computerized, variable-rate fertilizer applicators, precision farmers can divert more of their costly fertilizer to the highest-yielding zones and the least to the lowest-yielding zones. They can also use the zone maps to make other decisions, such as planting more drought-tolerant varieties in low-yield zones, or sowing less seed.

Five years of comparisons between these maps and actual “on-the-go” yield monitoring for cotton and corn on a farm in Mississippi showed that accurate yield predictions can be made based on topography.

Researchers contracted to have a plane with LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors fly over the 1,000 rolling acres of the farm. LIDAR is a form of radar that can map elevations digitally, showing slopes and sun exposures, by bouncing laser light off the landscape.

By blending yield results with the maps, the scientists divided fields into high-, medium-, and low-yield zones.

One advantage of LIDAR landscape mapping is that it only has to be done once.

LIDAR topographic mapping is spreading from state to state. Louisiana, for example, has financed LIDAR mapping of the entire state.

Otherwise, it is expensive for an individual farmer to pay for LIDAR mapping. So, McKinion is also looking for alternative topographic mapping techniques.

James McKinion, an electronics engineer at the ARS Genetics and Precision Agriculture Research Unit at Mississippi State, Miss., did the study with entomologist Jeff Willers and geneticist Johnie Jenkins at the ARS unit in Mississippi. This research was published in Computers and Electronics in Agriculture.

ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security.

“ISSAC is a space-related research project that will result in the delivery of direct benefits from space to the general public,” said Doug Olsen, ISSAC project manager. “The ISSAC project is in the midst of developing an upgrade to its camera sensor, which is expected to be launched in April 2011. It will resume operations during the 2011 growing season.”

ISSAC is designed to take frequent images, in visible and infrared light, of vegetated areas on the Earth, principally of growing crops, rangeland, grasslands, forests, and wetlands in the northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions of the United States. Images will be delivered within two days directly to requesting farmers, ranchers, foresters, natural resource managers and tribal officials to help improve their environmental stewardship of the land. Images will also be shared with educators for classroom use.

The system allows users to select specific geographical areas of interest over which to request collection of imagery in both red and near-infrared bandpasses, and at medium-high spatial resolution. Farmers using variable-rate application and other precision agriculture techniques will be able to dynamically delineate management zones as the crop vegetation canopy changes during the growing season; this can result in more effective use of fertilizer and other chemical inputs and reduce negative environmental effects.

“The UND interdisciplinary effort that has produced this camera is a remarkable story,” said UND President Robert O. Kelley. “Faculty and students from several colleges and centers on campus have produced an instrument that will analyze the composition of agricultural and other natural resources on the surface of the earth from the International Space Station.”

“The consolidation of multiple technologies into a single instrument will add tremendous economic value to the agricultural industry in North Dakota and around the world,” Kelley said. “UND and NASA have forged a very productive partnership in this initiative.”

ISSAC is operated from the Science Operations Center (SOC) on the UND campus, staffed by students from across the campus, including from the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences and the School of Engineering and Mines. From the SOC, students will send commands to ISSAC to take images and transmit them to SOC, where they’ll be processed and delivered to end users. Images captured by the camera will be made available to the public through UMAC’s Web page (see http://www.umac.org/).

Under a new agreement, FalconScan will harness the power of the AgJunction hardware and software platform to make it easier for customers to order and receive the company’s aerial imagery acquisition services.

Commenting on the agreement, Mr. Herron stated, “We are pleased to be teaming up with AgJunction. We believe that their services will streamline the ability of growers and service providers to place orders for FalconScan’s aerial imagery services and receive data back in a timely fashion. We strive to deliver finished data to customers within a week or less from the time they place an order, and AgJunction will help us make that possible.”

Jeff Dearborn, Managing Director of AgJunction at GVM Inc., said, “We are proud that FalconScan chose AgJunction as its provider of data management services. It is one more indication that AgJunction is becoming the go-to information technology platform for growers and service providers in the agricultural industry. With FalconScan’s help, we look forward to strong growth for our platform in 2010 and beyond.”

Headquartered in Glen Burnie, Maryland, FalconScan, LLC combines state-of-the-art remote sensing science and commercial-off-the-shelf technology to rapidly deliver high-resolution ortho photos, NDVIs, and field maps. The company’s proprietary solutions help growers efficiently manage crops, reduce inputs, and save money. FalconScan images can be used to support field scouting, develop prescription maps, and control variable rate technology.

A division of GVM Inc. (www.gvminc.com), AgJunction offers an information technology platform of hardware and data management software that is specifically designed for the agriculture industry. This flexible, web-based system allows users to manage moving and stationary equipment, and to manage field data work orders. In addition, it provides a comprehensive reporting system.

One good overview of this science, published in 2003 by USDA-ARS scientists from across the country, will help you grasp the realties and benefits that can be achieved. And the technology has dramatically improved since this was written.

One independent agronomic guru who is a favorite of mine (and I’ve quoted many over the years in farm magazine articles) in Tom McGraw, owner of Midwest Independent Soil Samplers (MISS). Tom calls a spade a spade, and offers some excellent advice, which he gives in his newsletter, on their website, and especially to customers.

Bottom line is you should consider examining one field, perhaps your toughest most variable ground, to see what you can learn and improve upon with this sensing technology. Talk to your local retailer to understand their capabilities, or contact one of the four MISS locations.

In this edition of the Precision Pays Podcast, sponsored by Ag Leader Technology, we talk to Autocopter president Donald Effren, who describes how this little helicopter with a five-foot blade-span operating at about 25 feet above the ground brings farmers and ranchers a level of sophistication that has its roots in the high-tech Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, better known as UAVs, that the military has been flying in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Effren says his aircraft is actually more stable than some of its military cousins.  And with controls that are easier to operate than most hobby shop model helicopters and a price tag of $30,000, in line with most farm implements, this little dynamo could be the next big thing in precision agriculture.

Listen to the podcast in the player below to find out more about the Autocopter. You can subscribe to the Precision Pays Podcast here.

SMS Advanced software is geared toward crop consultants, agronomists or other co-op personnel, precision ag managers, GIS mapping specialists and other service providers who provide precision farming services to growers. “We’ve been providing software and one-day general training since the late 1990s. But this past year we expanded to an in-depth three-day training course for advanced users,” says Michael Vos, SMS Sales Manager for Ag Leader.

“New and existing SMS Advanced software customers wanted an in-depth level of training, so we created a Certified Training program, which includes 15 to 22 CCA credits. We offer an excellent trainer to student ratio, as we normally have two trainers and 8 students, in our new state-of-the-art Ag Leader Academy computer lab,” he says.

The three days are tailored to exactly what the individuals want to learn. “We make lists of topics and details that are desired so users get the exact training to fit their business model. Some of the popular topics requested include: how to write equations for prescriptions, how to use aerial imagery and read it to make fertilizer use and crop scouting decisions, how to build a customer soil fertility booklet and creating soil management zones from aerial imagery and numerous years of yield data,” Vos says.

Every attendee receives a special certified manual with screen shot by screen shot steps for the software program. And within the book there are explanations why each tool is used, along with definitions and real world scenarios on how each tool is used.

“It’s definitely a complex tool, and when users see all the potential benefits of the software, they want to learn how to use it to the fullest extent,” he says.

Check out upcoming SMS Training Sessions…

For this edition of the Precision Pays Podcast, sponsored by Ag Leader Technology, we go to the Precision Agriculture Research Group (PARG) at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia where they are working on Ultra Low Level Airborne (ULLA) sensing. I spoke with group leader David Lamb about the system and its potential for helping growers who need timely aerial imaging information in challenging weather conditions and potentially saving them both time and money in the process.

Subscribe to the Precision Pays Podcast here.

Listen to or download the podcast here:

Through the collaboration of multiple technologies, Hemisphere GPS now offers imagery solutions to its agriculture and land management customers. Third Eye Maps uses infrared camera systems to generate aerial imagery and maps with a variety of useful information. For agriculture, this information is used to determine vegetation growth indices as well as nutrient and irrigation irregularities that are essential for the improvement of farm yield efficiencies. For land management, imagery aids in the recognition of invasive species and other vegetation identification that enables targeted management. The captured imagery data is post-processed and formatted into digital files which are compatible with most GPS assisted spray systems including the Hemisphere GPS Air IntelliFlow and IntelliGate liquid and dry flow control systems, respectively.

“This combination of technologies provides our customers with valuable data that can be used in conjunction with automated spray applications; whether they are simply turning a spray on and off, or using it with full variable rate treatment in aerial or ground applicators” says Kip Pendleton, Vice-president and General Manager of Agriculture. “Growers, pilots and landowners can now spot spray areas as small as one-tenth of an acre in a more precise and cost effective manner.”

Third Eye Maps brings more than 20 years of vegetation mapping and land management experience to Hemisphere GPS. The combination of Hemisphere GPS’ advanced guidance and flow control systems and Third Eye Maps’ aerial mapping technology and services offers Hemisphere GPS’ customers a more complete solution for imagery usage, data management and spray efficiency.

From March to September 2009, RapidEye imaged 8,000 hectare multiple times in Germany and provided ARES with up-to-date ground cover maps for different crop types such as wheat, rapeseed, barley, corn and sugar beets each month. The maps helped farmers requesting this product to better plan their agricultural fields and crops for the upcoming months.

Timeliness and accuracy of information is key when providing frequent agricultural monitoring. The RapidEye constellation of five satellites has the unrivaled ability to image individual fields, counties, states or countries on a frequent revisit cycle. Customers can receive field-based information including crop identification, crop area determination, crop condition monitoring, and growth stage determination.

“The results of the project were extremely satisfying, and through this new partnership with ARES we will be able to strengthen our position in the precision agriculture market. We are looking forward to going operational with this service in Germany in conjunction with ARES in 2010. We also expect that we will have additional opportunities to partner with them in the future on other ventures,” commented Michael Prechtel, Head of Sales and Marketing for RapidEye.

DMCii was invited to supply satellite imagery to the Office of Global Analysis, USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service (OGA USDA FAS) because it provides a unique combination of technical advantages for agricultural monitoring. Firstly, its satellites provide 22m and 32m Ground Sample Distance (GSD) multi-spectral imagery with a large 650km swath width that is capable of monitoring large areas rapidly. Secondly, the company is able to acquire daily images of a given location by coordinating the multi-satellite DMC constellation. Finally, multispectral image data is ideal for monitoring crop growth and is delivered in a highly calibrated Landsat-compatible format for immediate use in crop monitoring applications. DMC data has long been in regular use by precision agriculture services in Europe, where the speed of acquisition, accuracy and very large image size are exactly what is needed for successful monitoring of critical crop growth stages across entire countries.

Bob Tetrault, USDA Satellite Imagery Archive Manager, commented, “The use of DMC satellite data allows the crop analysts to receive broad area, multi-temporal monitoring coverage which is critical in our operational global food security analysis.”

Dave Hodgson, Managing Director DMCii, added, “Our multi-satellite imaging service is ideal for frequent coverage and crop monitoring as the data is collected as large images and delivered in a highly calibrated Landsat-compatible format so applications don’t need to be reinvented.”

DMCii delivers highly calibrated ortho-rectified imagery that can be imported directly into GIS applications. It has delivered 32metre GSD multispectral imagery since the first DMC satellite launched in 2002. The recent launch of two new 22metre GSD satellites, UK-DMC2 and Deimos-1 has greatly increased the imaging capacity of the constellation and has also doubled the number of image pixels per hectare to boost the effectiveness of the system for monitoring agriculture.

By coordinating the constellation of satellites, DMCii covers vast areas within a very short space of time so that data shows the state of vegetation for a very specific period. For example, DMCii coordinated the imaging of 38 countries in Europe within tight time windows specified by each country. DMCii will provide a rapid delivery of data to OGA USDA FAS so that it can be used for rapid decision making during growth seasons.

Cross compatibility is another important consideration when using different satellite imagery. The multi-spectral imagers used on the DMC satellites provide exactly the same spectral bands as the Landsat bands 2, 3 and 4 (R, G, NIR). They are also specially designed to provide highly calibrated imagery, with negligible differences in radiometry between DMC satellites so that data can be combined seamlessly. The large size of DMC images saves considerable time and expense for end users, because they cover huge areas and reduce the need to process large numbers of datasets.

Farmers were so impressed with an innovative crop fertilization service developed by Curtis MacKinnon and Wade Barnes that they urged them to take it to market, giving them the push they needed to strike out on their own. Since that initial start four years ago, Farmers Edge Precision Consulting has become a fast-growing business that is helping farmers across the Prairies and as far away as Russia improve their practices and profits. For this success, Wade, 34, and Curtis, 33, have won BDC’s Young Entrepreneur Award for Manitoba.

Farmers Edge helps take the guesswork out of farming. It combines remote sensing equipment and technology to redefine how farmers apply fertilizer to their fields to increase crop yields. The business is helping grain and oilseed farmers increase their profits by $15 to $100 per acre, while contributing to a 15 to 25% decrease in fertilizer application. Now covering 750,000 acres across the Prairies, Farmers Edge has grown to 10 management partners, 34 full-time and 11 seasonal employees, along with 17 consulting partners who are re-sellers of the services. Farmers Edge has just opened its own soil-testing laboratory, has taken its concept to large corporate farms in Russia and is constantly exploring new ideas.

“Before we got started, I was working in the fertilizer business, where research had been done on variable rate technology, but no one had found a way to make it viable,” explains Wade. “Then I started working with Curtis, who is gifted in technology, and together we decided to reinvent the wheel.” Wade hit on the idea of using remote sensing to map out the varying fertilizer needs throughout a field, and Curtis found a way to make fertilizer machines vary their output according to that map. When farmers saw what Farmers Edge could do, the service sold itself.

The two agronomy experts attribute the fast growth of Farmers Edge to the talented team and the unique ownership model they have put in place. That includes a design whereby territory managers take equity in the company. “We have been fortunate to find key people who share our drive,” says Curtis. “That has allowed us to keep growing and expanding.”

Curtis and Wade see expansion as a way of reducing risk. “Agriculture is so influenced by weather that if you are regionalized, one weather disaster could virtually wipe you out,” explains Wade. “Expanding into other regions reduces that risk.” They’re also always on the lookout for possible new ventures. “We’re very quick to seize opportunities. If we have an idea, we chase it.” That led them to Russia in 2006. Since then, Farmers Edge has been developing business in Russia and the Ukraine, tapping into the large corporate farm market.

Satellite photo by RapidEye - Illinois

German-based RapidEye, who uses a constellation of five satellites to photograph earth for numerous industries, partnered with Canadian companies GeoFarm and Agri-Trend to supply growing season images to farmers across Canada.

In a collaborative effort, GeoFarm, Agri-Trend, and RapidEye began working together at the beginning of 2009 to offer enhanced satellite imagery solutions to Canadian clients by offering “near real-time” satellite imagery for agriculture use backed by superior agronomics. The RapidEye satellite system was designed to meet the needs of precision agriculture, as it is the only commercial satellite system that acquires data in the red-edge spectral band. This band provides specific information about the chlorophyll content, and therefore nitrogen status of the crops.

“RapidEye provided high quality imagery products of different types on a ‘field order by field order’ basis to our Canadian customers over a wide range of crop types and conditions. This led to a variety of precision agriculture decisions and applications. With Agri-Trend Agri-Coaches™ providing groundtruthing and agronomic insight, the value of these informative images was understood from a practical agronomy standpoint for the ultimate benefit of our growers,” says Warren Bills, President of GeoFarm Solutions Inc.

Customers benefited from multiple captures of 5 meter resolution, multi-spectral imagery (red, green, blue, near infrared and red edge) of their fields throughout this year’s season. Products such as bare ground, chlorophyll and ground cover maps were delivered via the Internet to farmers, ag-retailers and agronomic consultants.

Tom Mueller, associate professor in the University of Kentucky (UK), College of Agriculture, guided Adam Pike, UK graduate student, on a project that examined whether reliable prediction models could be created to identify eroded waterways from digital terrain information such as landscape curvature and estimates of water flow from upslope areas.

“The terrain attributes were calculated from elevation data obtained with survey-grade GPS measurements collected on a farm in the Outer Bluegrass Region of Kentucky,” Mueller explains.

Results from the study are published in the September-October issue of Agronomy Journal. This work supported by a special grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The authors developed equations that accurately identified the potential locations of erosion-prone areas. They found that simple regression methods could be used to fit these equations as well as more complex non-linear neural-network procedures. The equations were used to map areas in fields where erosion was predicted. These areas corresponded very well with actual field observations of erosion. This work was confirmed with a leave-one-field-out validation procedure.

Research showed these maps could help conservation planners and farmers identify where erosion from concentrated flow is likely to occur, but not necessarily the exact shapes of these features. Field site-assessments would still likely be required for verification and to accurately delineate the boundaries of erosion-prone areas.

Mueller stated, “while this study is promising, more work is needed to determine whether these techniques can also be used with USGS digital elevation grids and from elevation data obtained with light detecting and ranging (LIDAR) data. Further, we need to evaluate whether models can be developed to predict across larger geographic areas.”

Mueller is conducting follow-up research to evaluate quality of erosion predictions created with 10-m USGS data sets and evaluating the performance of these models on fields in western Kentucky. He hopes to present the results of some of this work at the 2009 Annual American Society of Agronomy Meetings.

http://agron.scijournals.org/content/vol101/issue5/#SOIL_QUALITY__FERTILITY

switchgrass

Biomass crops slated for ethanol production are gaining research dollars as scientists use precision agriculture remote sensing to study the issues and logistics of getting crops from field production to the biorefinery gate.

A lot has to happen to a plant from the time it first captures sunlight in a field to being dispensed as fuel at the pump. For corn-to-ethanol, that path is fairly predictable, but for energy crops such as Miscanthus or switchgrass the journey is still through somewhat uncharted territory.

“There’s not as much information on energy crops as we have on corn and soybeans and wheat and cotton. So we have to build on those past successes and learn,” said University of Illinois agricultural engineer K.C. Ting.

“Energy crops like Miscanthus cut differently; a corn harvester cannot be used to harvest energy crops. Maybe the closest comparison is hay, but that’s not a perfect comparison either.”

Ting is leading a team of Illinois researchers in a program funded by the energy firm BP in the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) — a partnership between the University of California-Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory, and the University of Illinois.

“In the pre-harvest crop monitoring, we look at how precision agriculture, remote sensing, can be used to help growers understand how to manage these new crops,” Ting said. “Even harvesting has several steps: you have to detach it, you have to gather it, collect it, and resize it. Then you may have to either bale it or compact it. You have to load and unload many times from the field to the biorefinery. And in between you may need to store it. Sometimes the harvest window is small, but biorefineries need a year-long supply of constant high-quantity material. We have to find ways to keep it for a whole year in storage.”

Researchers at the University of Illinois use a variety of techniques for pre-harvest crop monitoring. A tower over a hundred of feet high with a multi-spectral camera watches over four nine-acre plots to study the health of the crop, a small unmanned helicopter can fly over crops to acquire images, and a cube-shaped frame with sensors is moved slowly across the crops. “Using these precision agriculture methods, we can help growers monitor crop growth, detect problem areas, and suggest what they need to do. With cotton, if you take an image, you can tell whether it is suffering from drought or insect or disease. But energy crops are so new, there’s minimum data,” said Ting.

Read more.

RapidEye provided S2B’s VISIOPLAINE platform with biomass maps to support nitrogen fertilization of canola fields for five regions from early winter 2008 to early spring 2009. In June 2009, RapidEye delivered chlorophyll maps for 2 different areas in France.

The results and field measurements are being tested, analyzed, and confirmed this year before introducing this solution into the wheat market in 2010. The cooperatives and scientific institutes contributed information collected in the fields, whereas RapidEye was responsible for the analysis from the remote sensing perspective, and delivered an intermediate product in the form of biomass and chlorophyll maps.

Based on these maps, S2B was able to make recommendations for nitrogen fertilization in canola and wheat fields to the farming community through their VISIOPLAINE platform. “In early 2009, S2B and RapidEye entered into a strategic partnership agreement for all remote sensing projects that VISIOPLAINE plans over the next three years.

Through our partnership with S2B’s VISIOPLAINE platform, we will increase RapidEye’s visibility in the French Precision Farming market.” said Michael Prechtel, Head of Sales and Marketing at RapidEye. Future projects with S2B include Precision Farming services for sunflower, potatoes and sugarbeet. RapidEye’s contributions to these projects include identifying variabilities of biophysical parameters within fields such as nitrogen content and leaf area index.

The images, referred to as the Cropland Data Layer (CDL), identify geospatial crop locations in three U.S. regions: the Mid-Atlantic and, for the first time, the Southwest and Southeast.

The CDL information is a useful tool for projects ranging from monitoring crop rotational patterns, land use change and environmental modeling, to water resource and carbon emission management. Agribusinesses and farmers, as well as government, researchers and academic institutions, use the CDLs to study pesticide risk, epidemiology, transportation, fertilizer usage and potential, market data analysis and carbon dioxide fluxes.

The Mid-Atlantic region is the largest CDL and covers Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The Southwest region CDL includes Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, while the Southeast region CDL is comprised of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee.

NASS produced the CDLs using satellite images observed at 56 meter (0.775 acre) resolution and collected from the Resourcesat-1 Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS), Landsat Thematic Mapper and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The collection of images was then categorized using on-the-ground information including field location, crop type, land cover, elevation, tree canopy and urban infrastructure.

The entire inventory of CDL products, including metadata and accuracy assessments, is available online at the USDA National Resource Conservation Service’s Geospatial Data Gateway and the NASS Website.

“Once farmers realize the value of varying N rates based on field productivity zones, most want to add more N to bring the low zone productivity up. We’re helping them to change this paradigm thinking because more fertilizer in a  low zone usually isn’t cost effective,” Khosla says. “Once we start talking in terms of raising the net dollar return of the entire field to the same level, that usually gets their attention. And we accomplish that by applying low rates to low producing zones, medium rates on medium zones and high rates in high productivity zones.”

In his presentation at the recent InfoAg precision farming conference, Khosla addressed several key efficiencies:

• Their SCMZ (soil color management zone) technique has three data layers — bare soil imagery, field topography and farmer experience (where farmers indicate high and low producing areas)
• In 9 out of 10 site years, this SCMZ method can accurately differentiate grain yield going from low to medium to high zones. And when N optimization prescription strategy is applied (low rates to low producing zones, medium rates on medium zones and high rates in high productivity zones) there is a significant increase in N use efficiency, and reduced N leaching as well.
• Research in Colorado has shown that N rates can be cut by up to 40 percent in parts of fields without losing any yield.
• The early days of using grid soil sampling to build prescription maps has shifted to management zones due to the constraints of grids — grid size too large to capture the spacial variability within a grid; difficulty of interpolating fertility levels between known sample points; fertility recommendation software ignores the inherent soil variability.

Listen to Khosla’s presentation to learn more:
RajKhosla009.mp3

Precision Pays coverage of the InfoAg 2009 Conference is sponsored by: .

The light-green strip on R was uniform rate of N compared to the healthier darker green variable rate N strips on either side applied by the on-the-go crop sensor from Ag Leader

At this week’s InfoAg 2009 conference, PrecisionPays.com caught up with Ag Leader Technology’s Roger Zielke to discuss a new sensor-driven product designed to help growers apply prescription Nitrogen rates by measuring the health of the growing crop.

Zielke, who heads up new business development for Ag Leader, describes how this Holland Scientific light sensor reads light reflectance of the growing crop and applies only the needed amount of N (controlled by Ag Leader’s DirectCommand) — which is proving to save money in corn fields that have a lot of variation. And there’s potential for even more uses, such as crop scouting, as well as adding new data layers to yield maps to aid future crop input decisions.

Listen to what Roger had to say…
rogerziekl17.mp3

Ag Leader is in its second year of field tests this summer, will begin marketing these sensors in early 2010. Current variable rate results with this sensor shows a savings of $15/acre to $120/acre compared to a flat rate of 50 lbs. N.

Precision Pays coverage of the InfoAg 2009 Conference is sponsored by: .

Data on farmers and fields will now be aided by satellites.

Farm Market iD, a leading provider of farm-level U.S. agricultural data, announced today the signing of a joint venture agreement with Fargo, North Dakota-based Agri ImaGIS.   The joint venture agreement between Farm Market iD and Agri ImaGIS creates co-development and co-marketing arrangements for Farm Market iD, a comprehensive database of U.S. farms, allowing the combined team to bring to the agricultural market a new and unique set of GIS [geographic information system] and geo-spatial products and services associated with sites in the database.

Farm Market iD is a company of Telematch, Inc., a leading marketing intelligence solutions company.  The announcement comes less than a month after closing the acquisition of Farm Market iD by Telematch.

“This exciting opportunity with Agri ImaGIS demonstrates our commitment to Farm Market iD and the agribusiness community,” said Peg Kuman, chief executive officer, Telematch.   “We are investing early and aggressively into new and robust technologies that will continue to position Farm Market iD as the leader in quality farm data and database solutions.”

According to Lanny Faleide, president, Agri ImaGIS, “With FMiD’s proprietary data that identifies grower and farm detail, along with its geo-coded Common Land Units (CLUs), and Agri ImaGIS’s proprietary satellite imagery archive and Web-based GIS products, we plan to offer growers and marketers the unique opportunity to map individual farms, identify the crops and acreages for each field and to know precisely who owns and operates each farm.   It is truly revolutionary in scope.”

“We are already in discussions with a number of leading ag suppliers about testing and licensing this unique enhancement of our database,” said John Montandon, co-founder of Farm Market iD who remains with Telematch as an investor and consultant. “This is a transitional moment for the company in several ways, and it certainly represents a major step forward in our intelligence offerings in support of farmers and to the agricultural marketplace. With Telematch stepping up immediately to support such innovations for Farm Market iD, we are excited about the practical applications that our joint venture with Agri ImaGIS will produce.”

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.

The aircraft is integrated to hyper-spectral cameras for use in precision agriculture image capture and analysis. The images are used by growers to determine the health of their crops, insect infestation, storm damage assessment and nitrogen run-off analysis. IUAS will be working with universities, agriculture business, and farmers across the state of Indiana.

Blair flies CropCam, a remote-controlled drone aircraft that takes detailed photos of his fields. CropCam is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that carries a high-resolution digital camera.

The drone meticulously maps every foot of the wheat field with high-resolution digital photos that pinpoint trouble spots where Blair can add more water or fertilizer to increase yields and bring in more dollars.

In the article, Robert says most farmers think you have to be rich to use such advanced technology. But, Robert advises that smaller farmers need to strongly consider investing in the technology if they want to remain competitive.

You can view the entire article here.