Precision Pays

GPS can mean more than Global Positioning System for women farmers, according to agricultural marketing specialist Jane Eckert.

“The G stands for setting goals,” Eckert told a meeting for women who are principal farm operators in Wisconsin recently. “If we don’t have a goal set, then any old road will do and that’s not good enough for business anymore.”

“The P stands for passion because when you have clear and concrete goals that you have a burning passion to make happen, you are more likely to succeed,” said Eckert.

Finally, the S stands for Skills. “We have to be willing to learn new skills,” Eckert says. “That means we have to be willing to leave the farm sometime to take classes and take workshops.” That also means learning about new precision technology and information that can help the thousands of women nationwide who are principal farm operators be more profitable.

Eckert spoke at a conference for women farmers called, Connecting Threads - Weaving the Fabric of Agriculture.

Cotton growers who were not able to attend the recent Crop Management Seminar in Mississippi have another chance to hear more about precision during the upcoming Beltwide Cotton Conferences.

The National Cotton Council works closely with Cotton Incorporated on planning technical and producer sessions for the Beltwide, which this year will include workshops on zone fertility management, precision software for consultants and precision record keeping.

Cotton Inc economist Dr. Jeanne Reeves says precision record keeping can help producers manage input costs more effectively. “We’re going to show how all aspects of that - from the crop production side, to the accounting side, to keeping up with labor, filing tax returns - is all part of the software growers can use to manage their business,” Reeves said.

The Beltwide Cotton Conferences are scheduled for January 5-8 in San Antonio.

The recent Cotton Incorporated Crop Management Seminar in Tunica, Mississippi featured workshops to help growers learn more about precision management.

Director of Agricultural Research Ed Barnes says they actually had two different precision workshops. “One for people who really had not done any work with precision agriculture. We had a workshop on the basics of how to scout your field, use a GPS and download data back to the computer.”

“Then we had a second workshop for people who are more experienced and wanted to take it to a new level, transitioning to zone management where you manage by soil type a little more,” said Barnes. The workshops concluded with a look at the “Green Seeker” variable rate application and mapping system that can help cotton growers make real time variable rate applications of plant growth regulators and defoliants.

Some 200 growers were able to attend the workshops and Cotton Inc plans to have another at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences in January.

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.

Here is the second myth busted by precision farming specialist Raj Khosla with Colorado State University in CSU’s May-July Agronomy Newsletter.

MYTH 2: Precision farming is too difficult to implement

Khosla says it’s not the physical implementation of precision farming that’s difficult, it’s opening one’s mind to change. “There is a steep learning curve with precision farming. But, once in place, precision farming can actually make your farming operation “easier” than it was before adopting it.” Before deciding it is too difficult, he urges farmers to consider the benefits, such as less time in the tractor, lower fuel costs and increased fertilizer-use efficiency.

Every producer knows that the entire field doesn’t yield the same all the way across. There is always that area of the field that just doesn’t yield, no matter how much N and/or water are put on. Agronomists have addressed this and in doing so, have turned traditional wisdom upside down with their unique approach to fertilizer management by viewing each part of the field as a potential investment. Only those areas of the field that are sound investments (i.e., have high productivity potential) receive a high amount of input. In contrast the poor investments (i.e., areas of the field that have a low productivity potential) receive very little, if any input; why invest in something that won’t give you a return? This strategy is known as “site-specific” and has been used widely in conjunction with management zones. The bottom line of this approach is that the total amount of input to be applied to a field is redistributed such that the areas of greatest potential receive the most and visa-versa.

Soil and crop science associate professor Raj Khosla with Colorado State University recently busted a few myths about precision farming in an article for CSU’s Agronomy Newsletter.

MYTH 1: Precision farming is grid sampling

While it is true that grid sampling was among the first few methods that the precision farming community (i.e., early adaptors) used to develop variability maps of crop production fields, precision farming does not rely on or even require grid sampling. What precision farming could do is precisely and accurately: (i) identify variability and its cause, (ii) quantify variability and its scale, (iii) record variability and its location, and (iv) map variability so that it can be managed. Grid soil sampling is only one such technique of quantifying variability; however, there are many other less expensive techniques available.

Currently there are several precision farming tools and techniques of varying input that do not involve grid sampling. These include, but are not limited to, site-specific management zones, remote sensing, apparent soil electrical conductivity measurements, yield mapping, and smart sampling. In fact, many of these methods were developed specifically to replace grid sampling. These methods run the gambit from low-tech and inexpensive to state-of-the-art sensors that can detect the nutrient status of a crop and vary the rate of fertilizer or other input on-the-go.

More myth-busting to come!

Once upon a time, education was based on the three “R’s” - Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. According to Colorado State University soil and crop science associate professor Raj Khosla, precision farming is based on five “R’s” - which really are R’s!

Khosla points out that precision farming is not a new branch or way of farming but “with increased globalization occurring in every sector of our economy, today’s farmer needs to produce better, greater, cheaper, and faster in order to remain viable. Precision farming can help today’s farmer meet these new challenges by applying the Right input, in the Right amount, to the Right place, at the Right time, and in the Right manner. The importance and success of precision farming lies in these five “R’s”.”

Khosla recently addressed some of the most commons myths about precision farming. We’re going to take a look at those in a series of posts coming up here on Precision Pays.

Precision cotton farming will be a focus of the upcoming Cotton Incorporated crop management seminar and workshops.

Randall Weiseman with Southeast Agnet recently interviewed Cotton Inc Director of Agricultural Research Ed Barnes about the event being held in Tunica, Mississippi on November 11-13. “We’ll actually have a hands-on seminar on how to do precision fertility management, how to collect soil samples with GPS, ” said Barnes. “For someone who is more experienced we’ll have a detailed seminar on how to transition to zone management and cut down your number of samples.”

More information is available on the Cotton Incorporated website.

Listen to Randall’s interview with Ed here:

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Valley Irrigation was showing off its brand new line of GPS Ready irrigation control panels at the Sunbelt Ag Expo earlier this month in Moultrie, Georgia.

“We have our computer panels that are industry exclusive GPS ready,” Sara Sims with Valley said during an interview at Sunbelt with Southeast AgNet’s Randall Weiseman. The GPS Ready PRO2 Pivot Control Panel and GPS Ready AutoPilot Linear Control Panel currently are available from Valley dealers. The GPS Ready Select2 Pivot Control Panel will be available later this year.

“If you’re doing split crops or different crops during the growing season, you’ll be able to computerize and track your programming to change your water and chemigation throughout the field,” Sara said. She added that current customers can upgrade existing PRO2 panels for the new GPS ready panels.

Listen to Randall’s interview with Sara here:

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Precision technology goes hand in hand with biotechnology when it comes to increasing productivity for agriculture.

That according to Dean Kleckner, chairman of Truth About Trade and Technology - as well as former president of the American Farm Bureau Federation and a farmer from Iowa. He attended the recent World Food Prize symposium where farmers from all over the world gathered for a Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable.

Kleckner calls precision technology “huge” in helping to increase agricultural production. “It isn’t just biotech that is leading to increased production. It’s being able to use precision farming to put on more fertilizer in the part of the field that is capable of producing more,” Kleckner said. “Sometimes it’s only ten feet apart, but if we map it we can apply fertilizer and tillage differently.”

“It all costs money to do it, but many farmers are saying it’s money well spent and I happen to agree that it is,” Kleckner continued. “And I would suggest that we ain’t seen nothing yet. I believe that in not too many years we are going to be able to double production of corn, soybeans, wheat and flax and everything else that we grow.”

Listen to comments from Dean Kleckner during an interview at the World Food Prize:

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