Decision Agriculture
By: Chase Gingerich, ProVantage Specialist and Agronomy Sales
Now is the time for decision agriculture: to move to the next frontier of improving management decisions with spatially collected farm data. Although spatial data is already being collected with the latest GPS equipment, many growers are struggling to know what to do with their data. By layering and analyzing this data, decision agriculture gives farmers the opportunity to manage inputs by every foot and optimize each field’s performance, extending well beyond the obvious regions of drainage tile needs or the basic data used to evaluate seed varieties. Decision ag analytics gives growers the confidence to make the most effective plans based on their own data. With today’s thin margins in the ag economy, the need for employing and embracing a decision agriculture mindset is evident.
But how is decision ag any different than precision ag? Precision agriculture utilizes GPS based equipment to precisely place seed, crop protection products, and nutrients with features like auto-swath control, row clutches, and auto-steer. These tools reduce waste around already treated areas on headlands, point rows, and waterways. This makes the payback on precision agriculture obvious and easy to measure, especially when there is extra seed that needs to be returned at the end of planting season.
Although precision ag lays the groundwork for decision ag, they are not the same. Decision ag utilizes multi-year data generated from precision equipment to layer and analyze farms spatially. This information helps growers and advisors build management zones. In ProVantage (our decision ag tool), typical management zones are broken out into highly productive areas (A zones), areas to maintain (B zones), and areas to be better managed (C zones). These established zones allow farmers and advisors to approach highly productive areas differently than lower performing regions through the variable rate prescriptions ProVantage generates. If less productive areas continue to yield 50% of the highest yielding areas, it makes sense to reallocate inputs where they can be expected to provide a better return. Reducing seed in these lower performing areas will often improve yield and profitability.
When high grain prices brought a flood of investment money into the precision sector, technology started outpacing the rate of collected field productivity data. Agronomic advisors started adopting the easy-to-capture layers of data such as soil types, growing degree units, and rainfall information in the place of meaningful field productivity gathered with GPS tools. These generic layers of data generalize anticipated productivity in the place of actual productivity and dilute the true meaning and value of real yield data.
Calibrated yield data is a critical first step in entering the decision ag frontier. Collecting quality farm data is impossible to replicate, which makes this process hard work and extremely important. Every season, each farmer has one chance to capture yield data as the combine crosses the field. Spatial yield productivity can only be collected with a combine; a drone or satellite image cannot estimate field productivity. Because of this, calibration discipline and attention to detail are crucial. When yield data is properly collected, ProVantage layers this with additional data collected throughout the season, to generate a useable format to improve the odds of making successful decisions.
Decision agriculture assumes a high level of basic management: adequate fertility, exceptional weed control, and managed field operations. No level of decision agriculture can ever compensate for a serious weed control problem or poor decisions, like starting field operations two days too early in muddy conditions. Failure to perform the most basic agronomic principles will cost much more than choosing the correct fertilizer or seeding rate. Decision agriculture offers real solutions to fine tune the smallest details.
As the list of precision tools to bolt onto equipment starts to be exhausted, decision agriculture becomes the next frontier. ProVantage, our brand of decision agriculture, offers solutions to help growers turn their collected data into an opportunity for smart and successful decision making. At the surface, this new frontier may lead you down what appears to be a boring path of fertility without any new flashy technology. However, ProVantage is going to look at the foundations of basic agronomy and offer real solutions to improve your bottom line. Evaluating your seed and nutrient decisions with field variability in mind, ProVantage will help you achieve the highest return on every seed planted and every pound of fertilizer applied with detailed crop plans and prescriptions.
