Chuck interviewed Tracy Blackmer, the Director of Research for the Iowa Soybean Association about how On-Farm Network makes maximizing precision ag on the individual farm a community effort. In the picture Tracy is standing next to an Iowa state map showing locations where they’ve conducted projects for the program.
You can listen to Chuck’s interview with Tracy here:Tracy Blackmer (10 min. MP3)
I know we’ve already mentioned some findings from the PrecisionAg Institute about whether precision agriculture pays. I had an opportunity to talk with K. Elliott Nowels, who authored a report for the Institute titled, “Precision Powers Profit” (pdf file) to learn more about what they did find.
First of all they found that 80% of farmers who use precision are making more money. In other words, precision really does pay. He says that they found that farmers using precision not only make more profit but they also produce higher yields. They also talked to growers who don’t use precision and found that cost and complexity are the two main barriers for them.
He says there’s three things growers should keep in mind about precision agriculture technology. 1. It’s a more efficient crop production system; 2. You’ll find yourself producing more and making more money; and 3. Because of an increasing amount of environmental scrutiny it shows that you’re becoming a better steward of the land.
Don’t forget that this interview is part of our Precision Pays Podcast. Subscribe on your computer and get them automatically using these instructions.
Precision technology isn’t just for farming anymore. The Dickinson Press reports that the Golden Valley Soil Conservation District in North Dakota is working on saline reclamation project. The project will examine the impact of increased levels of saline in surface and groundwater. Golden Valley says the higher levels of saline result in degraded water bodies and reduced crop and forage production. Precision farming technology and GPS technology are a big part of making the research possible.
Four cooperative conservation efforts in the state received funding from a $600,000 pot. The efforts target salinity management, erosion control in the Red River Valley, precision farming, soil health and invasive weeds on grazing land…
Maps with saline areas outlined before, during and after management changes can also be used to measure reclamation with soil tests and viewing saline effects using GPS. Down the road, wells will detect a water table rise recurring with crop fallow or intensive annual cropping. This gives producers time to make land use changes before the salt levels reduce production, stated the literature.
NRCS assistant state conservationist Jennifer Heglund is in charge of EQIP and part of the selection process.
“A proposal is evaluated based on the impact it would have on local natural resource concerns and how appropriate and applicable the proposal is for the farming and ranching operations in that area,” Heglund said. “In western North Dakota, there has been a big promotion of no-till type practices and still there are some salinity issues that are making agriculture difficult mainly due to saline seeps.”
Click here to view the entire article.
USDA’s Cooperative Extension Service has a good summary of a workshop held earlier this year on “Engineering Solutions for Specialty Crop Challenges.”
The workshop provided a forum for special crop industries to engage the science and technology community. Industry representatives voiced their concerns with regard to productivity, production efficiency, post-harvest processing, and environmental quality. In response, the research community offered some engineering science and technology capabilities that could form key components of eventual solutions.
The forum included representatives from citrus, horticulture, tree fruit, almonds and grape producers. There is some pretty interesting information here for specialty crop producers on how new technology might be able help them be more efficient.
The workshop noted that labor costs and availability, product quality, and environmental concerns are some of the primary issues facing these industries. The labor situation was a common issue expressed by nearly all attendees, primarily as it relates to the shortage of labor and the prospects for automation using robotics.
Here’s another use for aerial imagery - helping ranchers decide how many cows they can support per acre, as well as how much carbon rangeland plants store.
A study by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of North Dakota lays a foundation for eventually allowing ranchers to get Web-based information on the quality and quantity of forage plants in their fields. Ranchers could use this information to determine stocking rates, as well as how much carbon is stored in their forage plants.
Scientists Rebecca Phillips and Ofer Beeri have developed a way to measure rangeland forage plant yields in pounds per acre, and their quality in percent of protein content, over many acres. They’re using commercial HyMap hyperspectral imagery taken by airplane, which lets them capture images at more than 200 wavelengths—all of the light in the visible wavelength bands and invisible near-infrared and short-wave infrared wavelength bands.
This past week I’ve been attending an International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress in Japan. On one of our stops we saw precision agriculture on display in a rice paddy! This is in development now at the Furukawa Agricultural Research Station.
I interviewed Yoshisada Nogasaka, Research Team for Farm Machinery and Systems for NARC, the National Agricultural Research Center. He’s the guy who’s developing the software to run the prototype Autonomous Rice Transplanter we saw on demonstration at the Furukawa Agricultural Research Center. This guy is enthusiastic to say the least. He says that when he demonstrates this thing on a farm the farmer asks, “Can you leave it here on my farm?” They’re really looking forward to it but they’ll have some waiting to do. He says it could be up to 10 years before commercial production.
The Florida citrus industry is being threatened by diseases such as canker and greening that could have a severe impact on production in the future.
The Florida Department of Citrus has been working with NASA for almost three years now to determine how satellite technology can help the state’s citrus industry track grove acreage and tree numbers, and eventually spot the early signs of diseases. In a recent interview with the Lakeland Ledger, FDOC director of scientific research Dan King talked about the possibilities and the progress so far.
King says one of the goals is to provide a multi-level analytical tool. “Multi-level means from the individual grove up to the government agency level,” he said. “The areas of information are all based on satellite imagery and software interpretation that allows us to develop a database of information.”
“We are working on being able to find signatures on such things as citrus greening, and those signatures will be used to evaluate imagery,” said King. “The data we are currently gathering and the research being proposed and carried forward now suggests that within two to three years, we should have an answer as to whether this is truly a capability we can generate from aerial or satellite imagery.”
Read the Lakeland Ledger interview with King here.
Researchers at the University of Florida are developing an electronic system to “see” and count citrus fruit, a concept called machine vision. It could be commercially available by the end of the decade.
According to news from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, the system includes a Global Positioning System receiver and notes the position of each tree with the goal of helping growers manage specific areas for better productivity.
Daniel Lee, an associate professor with IFAS who leads the project, presented two papers on the system at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers’ annual meeting. In one, the system was used to count green oranges in the field and had an 85 percent success rate.
The system includes a digital camera with special optical filters, a portable computer, GPS receiver and software designed by Lee and his graduate students. The camera and computer are mounted on a truck and driven through groves.
This spring, CropLife® magazine and Purdue University’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business conducted a survey of crop input dealers for the 12th consecutive year to see which precision technologies were being used by dealers, what type of precision services they were expecting to offer in the future, and how precision farming customers were impacting their businesses. As in previous years, a survey was sent to 2,500 CropLife dealership readers to “take the pulse of the industry” with respect to precision farming.
This year, results are focusing on the Midwest dealerships who responded.
How Midwest Dealers Are Using Precision
The most common precision technology this year was GPS guidance systems with manual control/lightbar, by 75% of respondents, followed by precision technologies being used to provide services to growers. Rising to third place this year were GPS guidance systems with auto control/auto steer for fertilizer/chemical applications (used by 30% of the responding dealerships). Over one-quarter of the respondents (27%) used both types of GPS guidance systems, while 22% of the dealerships didn’t use either type of guidance system.
The biggest growth in technology in the last three years has been in GPS guidance systems with auto control/autosteer. In 2004, only 4% of the dealerships in the Midwest were using autocontrol/autosteer technology. Last year, 22% were using the technology and by this year 30% of the Midwestern dealerships were using it. The use of other precision technologies has more or less leveled off from 2005 to 2007.
Dealers are still expecting to add precision services in the next two years, with continued growth expected through 2009. The biggest growth expected is in fieldmapping with GIS, with 56% of the Midwestern dealerships expecting to be offering the service by 2009, up from 45% in 2007. Satellite imagery is also expected to grow substantially in the next two years, from 18% of the dealerships offering the service by fall of 2007 to 27% by 2009.
Precision technology appears to be here to stay in over three-quarters of the retail dealerships in the Midwest. The biggest growth currently is in use of the technology within the dealership instead of in services offered to customers. GPS guidance systems with autocontrol/autosteer continue to show the most rapid growth, though sensors (both on-the-go and mounted sensors) may be starting their growth in adoption as well. With the boom in ethanol production, a key strategic question is the impact of more corn acres on precision agricultural services (and vice versa).
Where are the opportunities? Where are the challenges? This story is one to follow in the 2008 CropLife/Purdue precision agriculture survey. Content courtesy of PrecisionAg, a Meister publication.
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The On-Farm Network of the Iowa Soybean Association is just that… a network meant to give farmers around the state tried and true information about precision farming technology and tools. 
Tracy Blackmer (10 min. MP3)
I know we’ve 
Earlier this year I did 
USDA’s Cooperative Extension Service has a good summary of a workshop held earlier this year on 
Here’s another use for aerial imagery - helping ranchers decide how many cows they can support per acre, as well as how much carbon rangeland plants store. 
This past week I’ve been attending an International Federation of Agricultural Journalists Congress in Japan. On one of our stops we saw precision agriculture on display in a rice paddy! This is in development now at the 
The Florida citrus industry is being threatened by diseases such as canker and greening that could have a severe impact on production in the future. 
King says one of the goals is to provide a multi-level analytical tool. “Multi-level means from the individual grove up to the government agency level,” he said. “The areas of information are all based on satellite imagery and software interpretation that allows us to develop a database of information.”
Researchers at the University of Florida are developing an electronic system to “see” and count citrus fruit, a concept called machine vision. It could be commercially available by the end of the decade.
Dealers are still expecting to add precision services in the next two years, with continued growth expected through 2009. The biggest growth expected is in fieldmapping with GIS, with 56% of the Midwestern dealerships expecting to be offering the service by 2009, up from 45% in 2007. Satellite imagery is also expected to grow substantially in the next two years, from 18% of the dealerships offering the service by fall of 2007 to 27% by 2009.