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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
