Precision Pays

If you’re looking to experiment with corn planting populations yet this spring, check out a very good paper on plant population compiled by South Dakota State University researchers Gregg Carlson, Paul Gaspar and David Clay.

Many agronomists and producers conduct experiments that test the impact of rates of fertilizer, population, or pesticide on yield. To analyze this data we need to conduct a yield response analysis. Agronomists and or producers that understand yield response and how to use yield response to determine the point of optimum economic return will be able to make better management decisions. The point of optimum economic return is determined by:
1. Conducting a yield response experiment
2. Converting the yield response data to a functional relationship,
outputcorn yield = f(input the plant population)
3. Using calculus to determine where the change in the value of the input equals the change in the value of the output.
In site-specific farming, scientists have found that yield response relationships may change spatially and temporally.

To learn more, read the paper “Using Yield Response Analysis to Calculate an Optimum Plant Population“.

All agricultural technology enthusiasts are invited to attend the 10th Annual Nebraska Agricultural Technologies Association Conference (NEATA), January 27-28, 2010 at the Midtown Holiday Inn, Grand Island, NE.

Pre-conference programs will focus on Optimizing Pivot Irrigation Management (9:00 to 4:00) and Social Media Applications in Agriculture (1:00 – 4:00) will be offered the afternoon of January 27.

The conference opens Wednesday evening with Dr. Raj Khoslo, Precision Agriculture Specialists, Colorado State University, discussing Precision Nutrient Management on Site-specific Management Zones, followed by Bill Kranz, Irrigation Specialist, University of Nebraska-Lincoln addressing Monitoring Irrigation Water Application with Computerized Controllers.

Thursday morning opens with international guest and precision agriculture expert, Sam Tengrove, Australian farmer, sharing Adoption of Precision Agriculture by Australian Grain Growers. Additional general sessions offered include Broadband: Who Needs It?, Mapping Evapotranspiration with High Resolution and Internalized Calibration (METRIC), and Global Perspectives of Site-specific Weed Management.

Twelve concurrent sessions addressing a variety of emerging agricultural technology topics will also be offered on Thursday. The concurrent sessions in the Ambassador room will be hands-on workshops. See the conference brochure.

Up to 8 CCA credits are available for conference participants with an additional 6 CCA credits available to those who attend the Optimizing Pivot Irrigation Management pre-conference workshop.

More information is available at http://neata.org.

Ag Leader Technology and AutoFarm joined forces today in Ames, Iowa at the official opening of the new Ag Leader Academy to talk about their combined tools of precision agriculture with the media.

Matt Darr, Iowa State University

Amidst the talks by management, touting the excitement of this alliance and their complete precision farming product offering, was a presentation by Iowa State University agricultural engineer Matt Darr.

He paralleled the adoption curve of hybrid corn (which took 18 years) to grower adoption of precision farming tools. In 2010, some 18 years since its birth, surveys predict that 50% of U.S. farmers will have adopted some form of precision farming.

“Since 1992, the industry began in the data collection phase, and has evolved into the steering control and variable rate application. And now we’re entering the third phase, which is implement control,” Darr says.

“Precision farming has enhanced productivity, has put the operator back in control, has enabled precision placement, provided cost savings and environmental benefits, has reduced production variability and much more,” he adds.

Favorite quotes. Darr talked of a few favorite quotes heard during University precision ag field days. 1. “Just being able to watch my planter is payback enough to own auto steer.” 2. “Precision guidance along with statewide RTK (CORS network) will finally make strip-till easier to adopt.”

While paybacks vary on given farms and operation styles, Darr outlines his views based on current research…

- Lightbar guidance: 300 acres/year for payback

- Universal auto steer on tractor: 400-500 acres/year

- Integrated auto steering: 900 acres/year

- Auto swath sprayer: 1,800 sprayed acres/year

- Site specific (variable rate) solutions: harder to put numbers on right now

In the future, Darr added that he sees success in real time nutrient control, and a greater push to biorenewables for energy–which will be delivered by precision tools.

Case IH and Ritchie Implement teamed up with University of Wisconsin-Platteville (UWP) to benefit agricultural students and their studies of precision agriculture.

“Access to new Case IH agriculture equipment will be a tremendous asset to Pioneer Farm – the precision farming solutions will greatly increase the productivity of our operations,” says Phil Wyse, director of Pioneer Farm. “But more so than that, this partnership advances the mission of Pioneer Farm – to enhance the agricultural education experience for students on campus and for agriculturists throughout the surrounding communities. That’s what we’re really excited about.”

Pioneer Farm, the university’s 430-acre working farm, boasts some of the best soil in southwest Wisconsin. The gently rolling fields, managed with conservation in mind, rotate between corn, oats and alfalfa, and those crops help support the farm’s dairy, beef and swine enterprises. A combination of new Case IH tractors, hay tools, skid steers, tillage implements, a planter and a combine, delivered in early 2010 and each year thereafter, will be used in the farm’s day-to-day operations. The equipment allows students and farm visitors to see the productivity-enhancing benefits of Case IH equipment in real-world applications.

“With the support of Ritchie’s and Case IH, the UWP Pioneer Farm is able to make use of cutting-edge farming technology,” Wyse adds. “We applaud Ritchie Implement and Case IH for this valuable partnership.”

“Students and university researchers will get to see, run, test and learn all about the newest innovations in production agriculture first-hand,” explains Ron Ritchie, president of Ritchie Implement Inc., a Case IH dealer with locations in Barneveld, Cobb and Darlington, Wis. “Our goal is not only to broaden ag students’ educational experience and better prepare them for their farming careers, but also to enhance educational opportunities for active producers locally, regionally and across the state. We’re excited to be part of that important effort.”

As part of the agreement, Case IH product specialists will be available to support classroom instruction and participate in student clinics and shared community activities such as University Field Days with hands-on field demonstrations.

Popular Science magazine did a nice job providing readers with a glimpse into the precision agriculture research that is needed to grow twice as much food by 2050. The writer talked about how this challenge is everyone’s problem, but scientists are hard at work fomenting a second green revolution.

Here are the research projects that the magazine chose:
1. Sahara Forest Project — Greenhouses using seawater and solar power to grow cash crops in the desert.
2. Soil sensors — Research at Iowa State University into wireless soil sensors that may help farmers use water, fertilizer and other inputs more efficiently.
3. Improved rice — Researchers hope to turn this staple crop into a super rice that grows faster in warmer and drier climates by transforming its photosynthesis process.
4. Replace fertilizer — Michigan State researchers attempt to replace/reduce commercial fertilizer use with microbes. They are currently field testing microbial cocktails (Bio-Soil Enhancers) that can simultaneously reduce the need for phosphorous and nitrogen, protect plants against pathogens and boost yields in virtually any type of crop.
5. HarvestChoice — The Gates Foundation is funding data compilation of Africa’s agricultural systems and land use to increase yields to feed the growing continent.
6. Satellite soil moisture — NASA and USDA are working to monitor soil moisture levels around the globe to hopefully improve crop forecasting.
7. Robot labor — The challenge of American specialty crop growers finding human labor is increasing difficult. Current research using robots with a variety of sensors will help machines scan for fungus, growth rate, soil moisture, humidity, light levels and more. But cost of such technology is the current challenge.
8. Rebuilding soil — Scientists hope to turn waste into a charcoal that, when applied to degraded unproductive soil, will attract microorganisms to help plants access nutrients, hold more water and lock in carbon. Companies are working on portable machines to produce biochar on-site.
9. Make supercrops — Research is bioenginering the African staple crop cassava root to turn it into the PowerBar of the vegetable world. They’re attempting to increase protein, add vitamins, increase shelf life, add virus resistance and eliminate cyanide-producing toxins in the root.

Speaking at the bi-annual precision agriculture InfoAg conference in Springfield, Ill., recently, Utah State Geospatial Extension Specialist Phil Rasmussen talked about the latest tools he uses in the field.

Rasmussen has worked with NASA on remote sensing projects, and 10 years ago began a geospatial training program for County Extension agents called “On Target.” In his talk he highlighted the best GPS handheld units, software he uses, some new tools coming and how these technologies are continually evolving and converging. Some of the products he mentioned include:
Archer system by Juniper Systems
StarPal software system
Spot Tracker unit
Favorite website – gpscity.com

Listen to Rasmussen discuss this technology…PhilRasmussen1.mp3

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Encouraging all farmers, not just the technology adopters, to use precision fertilizer Best Management Practices (BMPs) was the theme of an opening session talk by Clyde Graham, VP of Strategy and Alliances with the Canadian Fertilizer Institute.

Speaking at the bi-annual precision agriculture InfoAg conference in Springfield, Ill., today, Graham cited the importance of a global 4Rs BMP effort with their US counterpart, The Fertilizer Institute, and global science-based organization the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI).

As environmental issues mount and become more personal, the 4Rs—Right source, Right rate, Right time and Right place—can help farmers and the public understand how fertilizer can contribute to sustainability goals for agriculture.

Listen to Graham as he outlines the need to achieve social, economic and environmental goals, and make sure farmers measure their performance to demonstrate an ability to operate without undue regulation.

Listen to part of Clyde’s presentation: clydegrahambmp.mp3

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Maximizing economic return is the payoff sought by growers with any precision farming technology. And a new story in Southeast Farm Press talks about how the Precision Farming team at the University of Georgia is using soil texture to target nematodes.

With precision agriculture, we try to refine things in order to achieve the goal of maximizing returns,” says Richard Davis, USDA-ARS plant pathologist in Tifton, Ga. “And when we talk about precision agriculture in nematode management, what we really end up talking about is more effective targeting of nematode applications.”

Many of the things growers do for managing nematodes involve making applications over entire fields rather than specific parts of a field, says Davis.

As part of a large project funded in part by Cotton Inc. and the Georgia Cotton Commission, the Precision Farming Team at the University of Georgia has been evaluating a number of techniques for delineating areas within fields at high risk for nematodes.

The fact that root-knot nematodes prefer sandy areas has encouraged researchers to find ways to rapidly measure soil texture — either directly or indirectly — and one of the most promising techniques is to directly measure soil EC. Soil EC is a function of soil texture and soil moisture. Sandy soils produce low soil EC while heavier soils result in higher values of soil EC.

While different instruments have been developed to measure soil EC, one of the most popular is the Veris 3100. This instrument has six coulter-electrodes (disks) mounted on a toolbar. As the Veris is pulled through the field, one pair of disks transmits an electrical current into the soil while another pair of disks measures the drop in voltage. The separation between the disks determines the depth to which soil EC can be measured. In the most commonly used configuration, soil EC is measured simultaneously from 0 to 1 foot (shallow) and 0 to 3 feet (deep).

In addition to directly measuring soil EC, there are other promising methods for indirectly measuring soil texture. These include using real time kinematic (RTK) GPS to rapidly create detailed topographic maps of fields. Elevation and slope of the terrain frequently dictate where coarse textured soil particles are deposited by erosion.

Ask any grower who is succeeding with the various tools of precision agriculture, and you’ll hear about the importance of the local dealer’s field technician–such as John Deere’s AMS Technician program.

For anyone interested in this growing job field, check out Oklahoma State University’s Institute of Technology, which offers a two-year Associate in Applied Science degree in Precision Agriculture Technology.

Graduates from the new program will be prepared for a higher level of agriculture, in which most new jobs require skills in GIS, GPS, and remote sensing in addition to the familiar disciplines of agronomy, plant science, and agri-business.

OSU Institute of Technology students will be learning to use GPS and GIS technologies to provide detailed information to farmers on their crop’s health status, irrigation and fertilizer need, plus warn of attacks by insects or weeds.

OSU Institute of Technology’s program is designed to meet the needs of two types of students: those who want to earn an associate’s degree in agriculture with high employment potential; or those who want to complete their first two years of an agriculture degree, then transfer to OSU’s Stillwater campus to earn their bachelor’s degree.

To learn more about this program, check out the information guide.

The popular Ohio State University Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference has a six-hour session on precision agriculture technology topics.

Last year, more than 770 growers, crop consultants and industry representatives from Ohio and surrounding states found big benefits from attending a wide variety of presentations at this conference. This year’s annual meeting is scheduled for February 25, 26 and 27 in Ada, OH at the McIntosh Center of Ohio Northern University.

Precision topics include yield maps to save fertilizer and maximize yields, auto-steering and GPS, variable-rate application for sprayers and planters, site-specific sampling benefits, RTK networks and the costs/benefits of adopting precision technology.

Other topics on the program range from cover crops, grain marketing and weather to scouting, nutrient management, soil and water issues, and much more–including a trader show. And you can check out last year’s presentations online, too.

Spraying orchards is a messy but necessary job. And if Cornell researchers succeed, a driverless tractor and sprayer could simplify the task.

This fruit tree sprayer, fitted with sensors to determine location and height of trees, is part of a $3.9 million USDA-funded project at Cornell–in collaboration with the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. The objective is to develop, test and evaluate a fleet of autonomous tractors designed for precision agriculture applications–and John Deere is delivering four tractors for testing at Southern Gardens Citrus in Florida.

Goals for the project include developing tree-level precision agriculture applications that leverage, at very low cost, autonomous mobile platforms and supporting infrastructure; reducing the cost for wide-scale adoption; and soliciting feedback from growers, regulators and technology suppliers. The researchers will also study such questions as how disease detection, yield estimation and precision spraying can be most effectively deployed from the mobile platform; how many platforms one operator can safely monitor and what the installation, setup and support issues are associated with the system.

Stay turned to Precision Pays as we explore more robotics work, being undertaken at John Deere, with an eye toward the future of automation.

Got any burning questions in the geospatial technology realm? How about simply reading good Q&A about everything and anything related to GPS-based technology? You can do both thanks to an ask the experts page in the new website being started by knowledge and experts from 74 land grant institutions.

For example, here is one recent Q&A…

QUESTION: If the GPS gives a position only at the antenna, how does a spray nozzle thirty feet away on the end of a boom know to turn on or off?

ANSWER: It is correct that the GPS receiver can only provide the location of the antenna to the control system for the sprayer. However, the software responsible for turning the spray nozzle on and off can be calibrated based on the location of the nozzle relative to the location of the GPS antenna. Once the relative location of the spray nozzle is known, the software automatically converts the GPS signal into the position of the nozzle, allowing for on/off decisions to be made accurately.

Cool. So take a moment to fire off some good precision technology questions and see if you can stump the experts! Or at least learn valuable information that can help make precision pay on your farm.

I was just searching for precision agriculture training and found the TransAtlantic Precision Agriculture Consortium. It doesn’t look like they’re currently offering classes but they do have an educational training module still online.

The presentations on this page cover 15 topics important to precision agriculture. After carefully reviewing these topics, you should have a good appreciation for the techniques, technologies, and principles important to precision agriculture as well as their applications to production agriculture.

The information below is derived from teaching material created by Dr. George Vellidis for APTC 3030 – Principles of Precision Agriculture, a course he teaches at the University of Georgia, and from teaching material developed by Dr. Hermann Auernhammer for precision agriculture courses he teaches at the Technische Universität München.

It looks like more precision equipment is coming to apple and orange growers. You may not want to compare them except when it comes to the equipment you use to grow them though.

Two groups of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have received a total of $10 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to build automated farming systems. One is for apple growers and one is for orange growers, but both are designed to improve fruit quality and lower production costs.

The projects were funded this fall through the USDA’s new Specialty Crop Research Initiative. The Comprehensive Automation for Specialty Crops (CASC) Program, led by Sanjiv Singh, research professor of robotics, received a four-year, $6 million grant to develop systems for the apple industry. The Integrated Automation for Sustainable Specialty Crop Farming Project, led by Tony Stentz and Herman Herman of the Robotics Institute’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), received a three-year, $4 million grant to develop systems for the citrus industry. Both project grants will be matched dollar for dollar by industry, state governments and other funding sources.
Read the rest of this post…

This is the third and final precision farming myth busted by Raj Khosla of Colorado State University. You could call this one the money myth – and the whole basis of Precision Pays.

MYTH 3: Precision farming will not pay for itself

First of all, Khosla points out that “precision farming is not just the addition of new technologies, but is rather an information revolution, made possible by new technologies that result in a higher, more precise farm management system. To this end, precision farming can be applied at with any level of technology and at any field scale.”

Producers that have used precision farming for several years have paid for the initial equipment investment through increased farm profitability and productivity. How long it takes to pay for itself will depend entirely upon how much capital was initially invested and the type and scale of the farming operation.

A recent study from Colorado State University indicated that precision farming practices can result in as much as $71 more return per acre when compared to traditional farming practices. In their study, the researchers used a method of varying N fertilizer that is based on black-and-white aerial photographs combined with the farmer’s past management experience. Other than the time required to obtain a black-and-white aerial photograph (aerial photos are free-of-charge from the Farm Service Agency or the NRCS District Conservationist) and for the farmer to identify the areas on the photograph that were high and low yielding, very little time and money was required to create a prescription nutrient map. Hence, precision farming can and does pay for itself. Like any technological tool, one needs to assess which particular tool or technique would bring about the most benefit. Again, this depends on the type and scale of the operation. A “one-size-fits-all” approach does not fit in with precision farming.

Read all of Khosla’s article “Myths of Precision Farming” here.