As you look at the pictures and read about them you might well think, “So what?”

I think the reason there have been so many false starts on precision agriculture and the variable-rate fertilizer front is that too little attention is paid to the basics, i. e. the soil profile.

The soil profile is the 10,000-year record of how the climate, vegetation and topography have interacted to leave us the various soils we have in any given quarter section we are managing as a unit. When agronomists are designating the management units within the quarter, the soil profile should be the basic unit to make the first cut at mapping management areas.