Precision Harvesting

Wheat harvest is upon us and it seems like when August comes, fall harvest is just around the corner. As a kid, I always hated when August came, it meant "back to school sales" which meant, I was actually going to have to go back from school. While summer was technically a "break" from school, I think that is when I learned the most being on the summer harvest run with my family. Doing this "work" (can it be called work when you loved doing it so much??) has greatly helped me to get involved in the precision ag part of the farming world today. I believe that the use of precision ag is a big way in which we are going to produce the food to feed the worlds increasing population.

As I stated just a moment ago, I grew up going south every summer on the wheat harvest run with my family. The summer that I turned 12 was the first year that I ran the combine for the summer, and every summer after that until I was 18 and my family called it quits for the harvest run. The first combine that I ran was our JD 9500's. Back then it was very rare for anyone to have a yield monitor in their combine, I mean it was only the super large farmer that would even possibly have it. These days things are much different, you cannot even hardly buy a newer combine without a yield monitor and mapping. The changes that we have seen in the last 19 years since I first began combining have been HUGE!

New Case 9120 Combine

Today's combines give us the capabilities to not only harvest our crops much quicker and more efficiently, but also the ability to keep track of what happened in each spot of the field as far as yields and moisture. Combines that have yield mapping collect yield, moisture, and GPS data every 3-4 seconds. This information can then be taken back to your office or coop or consultant and analyzed and then be used in decision making for the next years crops. These yield maps can be used to help us make variable rate fertilizer prescriptions, variable rate seeding prescriptions, decisions on where drainage tile is needed to be installed or fixed, to find soil compaction issues and many other decisions that we can make to improve crop yields in the future. The use of yield maps helps the farmer to make wise decisions that will help them to produce higher yielding crops and to do so while making each input work to its fullest extent.

Yield Map

One way to look at it is that the yield maps are like a report card, and the yields in each area of the field are the "grades" of what was done to that area as far as fertility, seeding, weed and insect control, and the effects weather had on the crop that year. When we look at the "grade" of each separate area of the field we need to understand what happened in the field that year to be able to make sense of the yield map. Good record keeping will greatly help in understanding each yield map. Farmers can use this information to decide if they need to change any of their management decisions for the next year, it lets them know what did work and what didn't work.

Planning the prescription planting map

When harvest is finished and the combines are put away, the yield data collected that year needs to be cleaned before it can be used to make prescription maps. Cleaning the data consists of removing all of the bad data. Bad data can be caused by sudden increases or decreases in combine speed while harvesting, poor GPS signals, abnormal events in the field, as well as other things. This data needs to be removed to make the yield map be correct. I have seen uncleaned yield data that shows corn yields from 0-5000 bushels per acre in one field, when cleaned the range may be 75-275 bu/ac. It is important to get these errant data points cleaned out in order to make good seeding and fertilizing maps.

Getting and using high quality yield data is a base to a good precision ag plan for each farm. There are many other sources of information that need to be used also, but the actual yield data from the field is absolutely invaluable when it comes to making decisions on what to do in the future. For those who are uncomfortable with doing the yield cleaning and prescription mapping part, there are companies and cooperatives with people who will work with the farmer to help them to utilize their technologies to their fullest extent.

What is Precision Ag?

What is Precision Ag? Why is it important to know what it is and what it does? How does it affect the food we buy at the grocery store? What part does it play in our food security? Well these are all good questions, and I will do my best to answer them the best that I can.

Yield Map

So what exactly is precision Ag? Precision Ag is the use of technology such as GPS guided auto-steer, variable rate fertilizer, variable rate seeding, yield mapping, satellite imagery, topography etc. to to allow for closer, more site-specific management of factors affecting crop production. I will explain in more detail about these technologies in later posts. Precision Ag is going from a "one recommendation fits all" approach to treating different areas in a field differently according to what that area specifically needs.

Planting Monitor

You may be thinking, "well that is interesting, but what how does that really affect me?"  Farmers use precision Ag to increase their crop yields, profitability, and to be good stewards of their land. To do this, farmers are using precision Ag components to put the right amount of fertilizers and the right seed hybrids on the right spots of their fields to increase their yields. Putting the right amounts of fertilizers in the right areas is also better for the environment vs using the same rate across the whole field, putting only the required amounts in each area ensures that we are not putting excessive amounts on an area that will not utilize them. Besides striving for increases in yield, farmers are constantly striving to produce the highest quality product at a reasonable cost. So what exactly does this mean to you, the consumer? The answer is ultimately higher quality food products at a reasonable price, all while being careful not to over apply and cause a loss of nutrients.

Another very important part of precision Ag is its how it affects food security. The definition of food security is the "sustained production and distribution of safe and nutritious food in quantities and quality in order for people to have healthy lives." (Russo, J. (March 2009). Technology To The Rescue. In www.precisionag.com. Retrieved July 10, 2012,     from http://www.precisionag.com/viewpoints/joerusso/?storyid=1509#.) Precision Ag directly contributes to food security from a more consistent performance at the point of production. 

RFID tag next to Rice Grain

Precision Ag is just beginning to impact the "safe and nutritious food" part of the definition. This part requires the ability to track food from the field to the consumer. One way this is starting to be used is using RFID (radio frequency identification) tags in produce that allows the tracking from production to your table. Using this technology to track from the point of production allows us to catch any issues that might happen anywhere in the chain from production to consumer.


While these few topics we have discussed are just a fraction of the uses for technology in agriculture, the effects can be very beneficial to both the producer and the consumer. Precision Ag helps the producers control their input costs by only applying the amounts of inputs needed to maximize their crop yields, this also ensures that we are not over applying products like fertilizers which could cause undesired run-off to off site areas. I would sum it up by saying that precision Ag allows producers to save money, maximize production and contribute vast amounts of safe food to the world to feed the ever increasing population.

Precision Ag Cycle

How is Precision Ag helping tell our ag story?

Happy Birthday America! First of all I would like to thank anyone who has served or is serving our country in the military! May God bless you and your families! You are truly hero's to the rest of us!

I have been contemplating over the last half of the year about how fast we need to adapt to precision ag, and I have concluded that we need to do it as quick as we possibly can! While working for a coop we deal with all types of growers, those who are on the cutting edge with technology, and those who use almost none. However, precision ag is becoming a way of life for many of the farms around the area, especially those operated by younger farmers.

Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of discussion about the need to double the production we now have by the year 2030 to keep up with the demand for food/feed/fuel needed by the ever increasing world population. I believe that precision ag is going to play a huge role in this. To do this we are going to be using less fertilizer on less acres, and expecting much more productivity on the land we do have all while being more and more scrutinized for our farming practices and the effects of agriculture on the environment. While technology will not eliminate the scrutiny we receive, I believe that it can greatly help us tell the story of ag and how farmers are the first environmentalists. Just a few of the technologies I am talking about are variable rate fertility and seeding, as well as yield mapping, and many others, some that are probably not even thought of yet.

In my point of view, the use of precision ag will be driven by grower demand and requirement of use by regulatory agencies. We already have programs that require variable rate fertilizer applications, paired with soil tests, tissue tests, and stalk nitrate testing. As with most government programs, these include quite a few hoops to jump through, and some of the ideas look good in theory but in reality are not quite as clear-cut.

Probably the biggest driving force for precision ag will be grower demand. With the rising costs of seed/fertilizer/land rent/machinery/etc there is much more demand to make every input as efficient as possible through the use of auto-steer, variable rate technology, telemetry, computer software, hardware, and the need to make all of the different technologies work together.

I believe that social media will be one of our biggest tools we can use to get our story out to the non-agriculture public. The non-agriculture public is going to have their ideas about agriculture told to them by someone or some news story, and this information might be completely wrong, so I believe that is our responsibility to tell our own story to make sure it is told right!

I am thinking that what I would like to focus this blog on is the use of precision ag and how it can improve our efficiency, as well as how we can get the message of modern agriculture out to the general public, showing them where their food comes from and the great measures that we go to to make sure that the food supply is safe. I would appreciate any comments or questions or ideas on how to administer this blog better or ideas on what to write about.

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