Beric Haukaas is a fourth generation grain farmer who is sold on the benefits of variable rate prescriptions for seeding his durum and canola crops, and has been using prescriptions on the family farm west of Moose Jaw for the last five or six years.
“Where we farm the soils vary so much – basically from pass to pass – between sandy, sandy-clay and clay-loam, it just made sense to me,” says Haukaas. He made the decision to build prescriptions for the whole farm the first year and hasn’t looked back.
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Traditionally growers apply fertilizer based on the average yield of the entire field. This would not account for the more or less productive areas in that field. With a variable rate application,
resources can be applied where they do the most good.
Haukaas uses CPS’s platform, called Echelon, because he felt it provided the variability he needed for his incredibly diverse soil conditions. “With Echelon we’re able to have as many as 200 prescriptions per field and the range in nitrogen application rates can go from 30 lb. to 150 lb./ac.,” says Haukaas. “The plan was tailored to my field without any limitations like zone numbers or size.”
Haukaas is typical of the growers now using data, advanced platforms and prescriptions to make the most of his resources and inputs. The shift to adopting new technology is not just being made by the younger farmers but those who have a more business-focused view of their farming operation. It’s more about mindset than farm size.
Haukaas has seen the results. “We did check strips the first year or so and in every strip we saw a yield increase or a savings on fertilizer,” says Haukaas.
He also mentioned that while his fertilizer budget remained the same, he was able to apply it more effectively, increasing the rates on areas that had shown potential, and reducing the amount on areas that would be less likely to benefit.
HOW TO BUILD A PRESCRIPTION
The diversity and depth of the data that goes into building a prescription is remarkable. Normalized Difference Vegetation Data (NDVI) is available from the beginning of this century, providing around 15 years of seeding and feeding results with which to forecast. NDVI will look at plant density, growth rates and so on that forecasters use instead of relying solely on soil samples.
As well, yield data and a weather forecasting algorithm are included to predict and weight the results related to past events and the expected weather conditions for the coming year. “Leveraging the power of new technology like the cloud (telemetry) and super computing, with the NDVI and weather algorithm, we can go much deeper than we could if we were just doing soil sampling in set sections of a field,” says Tom Staples, Director, Echelon. “We look at the history of that field, combined with different weather events during that history and then use long range weather forecasts to nudge the prescription so that it’s set up for the coming growing season.”
Platforms like Echelon need to be “colour blind”, as much of the technology differs between equipment manufacturers. Staples sees Echelon as a universal translator, bringing assorted information together to be used jointly to build the prescription. “Our platform is set up to pull from various equipment and handle all formats of data,” says Staples. “We can then lay the diverse maps over one another and draw out information that helps make decisions.”
Once the prescription has been built, an Echelon technical representative will come out to the farm to load it into the monitor and then help the grower use it, but quite often not before his agronomist has joined the conversation. “I’m not involved with the equipment. We have people who specialize in that,” says Ryan Adams, Manager, Agronomic Services, CPS.
Adams’ role is to fine-tune the prescription. “We want to make sure it takes into account any issues in the field that we might be aware of,” says Adams. An example of this would be an area of peat moss.
Because the satellite imagery (NDVI) is reading how much green matter an area is capable of producing, a peat moss area would be considered highly capable of producing lush, high density crop pockets. This area would then be targeted for higher fertilization rates, which would not work well.
“We would generally pull back on nitrogen in these areas because they tend to mineralize it, but increase phosphorous and potassium,” says Adams. “So this is an adjustment we would make to the prescription. In a field that has areas that will only ever yield 30 bu./ac., you give it what it needs to maintain that. Other parts of the field might have better organic matter or soil structure that could produce 60 to 70 bu./ac. so you can allocate the groceries there to achieve that potential.”
While the measurement of the success of variable rate fertilizer application is still a work in progress, overwhelmingly those involved with it see the benefits.
Staples takes a big picture view on the possibilities of this technology. “Putting all of this information on top of one another allows us to ask the question behind the question,” says Staples. “For example, crop varieties typically are registered based on being the most “consistent” in a number of different conditions. So, why didn’t it yield well in these conditions? By collecting the data behind it we can say this variety does very well on this soil type, if it’s fertilized at this rate with this fungicide application.”
FLAT FEE GIVES YOU FLEXIBILITY TO BUILD MORE PRESCRIPTIONS AND EXPERIMENT
Staples believes in the benefits and flexibility a standardized service fee offers, where a grower with over 2,000 acres pays one $10,000 fee for the year. “If they’re on the flat fee, they can build as many prescriptions for a variety of applications as they like at no additional cost,” says Staples. “It encourages them to experiment a bit with fertilizer rates and try something like a variable rate fungicide application.”
When asked if he felt the investment was worthwhile, Haukaas was clear. “This is not just a variable rate company,” says Haukaas. “These people have become my advisors and the support I get from them, the convenience of having them store and handle my data and help plan the coming year, is the service I pay for. I feel like I get the prescriptions for free.”
