“GrainVue is a temperature and moisture monitoring system for inside grain bins,” says Dave Ellis, GSI’s district manager.

“It can be added to new or existing bins. It will read real-time temperature and moisture.”

Available on an annual subscription basis, the system hardware uses a built-in cellular connection to send information to the cloud. Growers can log into the system online to get real-time data or send instructions to the system’s controller on the bins to start or stop fans.

GrainVue can also be preset to turn fans on or off based on conditions both inside and outside the bin.

“It comes with a weather station that takes into account humidity, temperature and all those components,” says Ellis.

“You can have automatic fan control to where it would kick the fan on for you when it’s supposed to at the optimum time and temperature. You can set your own parameters.

“You can actually rehydrate (soy)beans with it if there’s humidity in the air and the beans are dry. It will kick on and put moisture back into the beans, increasing your profitability.”

GrainVue users can also set the system up to send alerts. Those alert conditions can be customized to meet any grower’s preferences.

The system can handle the input from a number of sensor cables inside the bin, which gives a grower flexibility in deciding how closely the grain is monitored.

“You can do the minimum, which is one in the centre,” says Ellis.

“Our recommendation is to add more. You can have moisture and temperature cables. It’s all how in-depth you want to read the entire bin. These are all digital cables, not analogue.

“The good thing about this system is it’s modular. You can start out with just one basic cable without fan control. If you like it, you can start adding components whenever you want to.”

The post GSI’s GrainVue allows for remote grain bin monitoring appeared first on Grainews.

Manufacturers are increasingly adding sophistication to their baler models, and this year John Deere added weave automation to its 1 Series round balers.

“Weave automation is the new weaving hitch we have,” says Kaylene Ballesteros, go-to-market manager for hay and forage products at John Deere.

“When you think about when you were younger, weaving back and forth to make sure you have that nice square-shouldered bale coming out, you don’t have to do that anymore. All you have to do is drive straight over that windrow and the baler does that weaving for you.”

Weave automation uses an automated hitch that can swing up to 38 degrees from side to side All the tractor operator has to do is drive straight ahead and let the baler to the work. It also eliminates the risk of driving over the windrow with the tractor and pressing it down so the baler can’t pick up the material under the wheel tracks.

Weave automation is available on a number of Deere baler models as an option.

Other features on the 1 Series balers include bale documentation, which provides near-real-time data on the hay in the baler to the tractor monitor.

“Bale documentation is something we launched last year,” Ballesteros says.

”We have an integrated bale moisture and weight sensor in the sidewall of the baler. Every bale that goes through is weighed and the moisture is checked and sent to the display in the cab in just about real time. So you’re able to have those bale-to-bale metrics. It can translate that into a field-by-field metric and transmit that with a John Deere modem to the John Deere Operations Center.”

To help feed the baler, a Mega Wide pickup is an option on some models, which Ballesteros says adds to the productivity of the baler.

“Our Mega Wide pickup is a feature we’ve had for a few years now,” she says.

“It means about 80 more bales a day when it comes to productivity than our standard pickup. You can get that on the M and R spec balers.”

The 1 Series balers were introduced in 2023 and also include automated gate cycle functions, ensuring the gate opens at the right time to discharge a completed bale, reducing operator fatigue.

The post John Deere balers get weave automation appeared first on Grainews.

Farmers don’t get directly paid for this help, but being involved in the process to monitor crop diseases, weeds and insect pests becomes integral to the work of researchers producing accurate maps, pest-severity forecasts, and potential treatment and management options. The hope is that all this information comes together to help farmers to better protect their crops.

Farmers and landowners can help researchers in a couple of different ways, says Brent McCallum, a plant pathologist at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Research Centre at Morden, Man. He specializes in wheat leaf rust disease and chairs a relatively new initiative, the Prairie Biovigilance Network (see sidebar below).

Allow access

One important area where farmers can help is to allow access to their land, McCallum says. Farmers make it known through their agronomist, provincial ag rep or commodity organization that researchers and technicians can visit fields to check for pests, whether it be weeds, insects or diseases.

This doesn’t mean hordes of people will be trampling or driving over standing crops, he says. It usually involves one person walking into a field from the road, wearing phytosanitary boot covers and making a quick inspection on random fields. Whoever makes the inspection always calls and double-checks with the producer before they come.

Boots on the ground

The other important area where farmers can help is to provide researchers with information on what they see in the fields. Their reports on crop disease symptoms, new or suspicious weeds and insect activity all help to complete the crop pest severity picture.

“It is all totally voluntary,” says McCallum. “But farmers are the front-line people and as researchers we are always interested in what they are seeing in their fields.” They may be able to submit photos, collect and submit samples, or just provide a report on crops or a pest situation.

All information collected goes into a database to produce maps showing distribution of each crop pest, helps researchers determine the severity of a given pest, and contributes to recommendations on treatment or management of a particular disease, insect or weed.

Producers helping researchers isn’t a new idea by any means, McCallum says. Farmers, landowners and others from non-scientific communities have been providing feedback to agriculture researchers for more than 100 years.

Saskatchewan Agriculture, for example, has a long-running program where farmers can sign up to be Crop Reporters — essentially reporting on crop conditions. More recently the department created a service where farmers can sign up to help with pest monitoring. Farmers interested in making their fields available for monitoring in that province can get more information here.

“Farmer involvement continues to be important in helping to monitor and measure pest conditions, assess the risk and then develop recommendations for treatment and management,” says McCallum.

Voluntary and confidential

Some key points for producers interested in making their land or themselves available to collect information on crop pests:

• It is totally voluntary.
• If a farmer does make their fields available to random inspections, the researcher or technician making the inspection will call ahead of the visit to confirm.
• All information is totally confidential and farmer identity is protected. If there is a disease, insect or particular weed identified, it will be mapped or go into the database as being within a region or municipality with no connection to a particular farm.
• Often the researcher is able to provide the producer a confidential report of what they do find in the fields, for their own use.

“There are hundreds of farmers across Western Canada who open their fields and provide information to researchers, now,” McCallum says. “But in some respects it is getting more difficult to connect with producers.”

For example, “farmers get a bit leery in providing information to someone, concerned that down the road they may have to pay for some tool or service. And with an increase in rural crime in recent years, farmers are concerned about trespassers and who has access to their land, and there are also privacy concerns — who is going to see and how is this information to be used?”

McCallum emphasizes that visits to farm fields to assess crop pests are planned with minimal inconvenience to the producer and the producer’s right to privacy is well protected.

The information collected is valuable to the broader farming community in determining the degree of severity or risk of various pests, and is key for formulating management plans as needed, he says.

Connecting with researchers

So, how can producers connect with researchers within the Prairie Biovigilance Network? Here are three of the researchers with specialties in insect pests, weeds and crop diseases who welcome any and all producer co-operation:

Meghan Vankosky

Entomologist, AAFC Saskatoon

Researcher Meghan Vankosky, at AAFC’s Saskatoon Research and Development Centre, says having the co-operation of producers to be able to monitor fields for insect pests is essential to get a handle on pest distribution and severity.

Vankosky, co-chair of the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network, says over the past 10 years it has monitored 5,000 to 6,000 sites (fields) annually, collecting information on insects and other pests.

“With changes in provincial government trespass laws as well as changes in government policy it is becoming more difficult to access farm fields to conduct these surveys,” she says. “And every province is a bit different.

“When it comes to grasshopper surveys, for example, most of the time we conduct our sweeps in the ditches which gives us a pretty good idea of grasshopper numbers. However, for other pests we do need to check pea or canola fields, for example, and for that we need farmer permission.

“Once we have permission it is pretty straightforward; a survey only takes about five minutes. We walk into a field make our sweeps and then we are gone. But producers do need to provide permission.”

Vankosky’s research and field survey work aims to monitor seven key insect pests affecting western Canadian field crops: grasshoppers, wheat midge, wheat stem sawfly, diamondback moth, cabbage seed pod weevil, pea leaf weevil, and bertha armyworm.

Farmers willing to provide permission to have fields checked can contact Vankosky directly. They can also contact one of the provincial specialists, watch for notices on social media platforms, and in Saskatchewan can sign up online to provide pest monitoring permission. Here are those contact points:

• Prairie Pest Monitoring Network
• PPMN monitoring protocols
• Meghan Vankosky, AAFC Saskatoon
• Amanda Jorgensen, Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation
• Shelley Barkley, Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation
• James Tansey, Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture
• John Gavloski, Manitoba Agriculture
• Volunteer sign-up information on how to authorize access to your farmland in Saskatchewan
• The online form for the Saskatchewan program

Charles Geddes

Weed scientist, AAFC Lethbridge

Farmer involvement is also welcome as Charles Geddes, weed scientist at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, monitors the weed situation across Western Canada.

Geddes, who chairs the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network, encourages producers to make fields available for weed abundance surveys, which are conducted annually. He also urges farmers and agronomists to be vigilant, particularly following weed control measures, to identify plants that may be showing signs of herbicide resistance. Over the past four years the weed abundance survey has checked about 4,000 sites and another 1,600 sites have been monitored for herbicide resistance in weeds.

The weed abundance survey involves randomly selecting about 1,000 quarter sections of cropland per season across Western Canada that will be checked for weed types and population. For the herbicide resistance survey, about 200 quarter sections pre-harvest and 200 quarter sections post-harvest are checked to identify any signs of herbicide-resistant weeds.

“We select quarter sections at random and then approach the landowner for permission to check those fields to identify weed populations,” Geddes says. “It is totally voluntary and we are very respectful of producer wishes, but we’re hoping producers will allow our technicians access to survey the weed population.

“These surveys are an important part of identifying what weeds are out there and their density in any given area,” Geddes says. “That all contributes to the greater good of helping producers and the industry identify problems and management practices.”

Producer confidentiality is protected, so weed types and population data cannot be traced to any particular farm. A report on the results of a weed survey, however, will be given to the producer so they know what weeds have been identified on their land.

Along with research through the Biovigilance Network, Geddes, whose main research area is herbicide-resistant weeds, also has a couple of projects underway, relying on producer assistance, to help identify new cases of resistance.

“The first project relies on farmers and their agronomists to help identity potential cases of herbicide resistance that they see in their fields,” Geddes says. “After a burndown application, and particularly after an in-crop herbicide treatment, we are asking them to be watching while field scouting for any signs of weeds that haven’t been affected by the herbicide.”

The ideal time to do so is about three weeks after the herbicide application. “It is particularly telling if they observe weeds that have been controlled, as well as some that appear to unaffected. That is usually a good indicator of herbicide resistance.”

If herbicide resistance is suspected, Geddes encourages producers to contact him. He will send out an information kit, with the end goal of asking the producer to collect mature seeds from these unaffected plants and have those seeds submitted to Geddes for testing.

“If test results do identify herbicide resistance we can then work with that producer to develop a management plan to hopefully contain the issue before it becomes a bigger problem,” he says.

The second project related to identifying herbicide resistance in weeds, involves a new genetic test that can be made on plant tissue during the growing season, which can provide more timely results.

The testing technique, which looks for genetic markers — the genetic mechanism that confers herbicide resistance — has been proven, and Geddes is now working to identify labs across Western Canada that can provide the test. It’s hoped the test and a list of qualified labs will be available in coming months.

For background and reports from the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network, visit its website.

Kelly Turkington

Plant pathologist, AAFC Lacombe

The Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network (PCDMN) is being developed as a one-stop shopping site for everything producers need to know about identifying and managing cereal, oilseed and pulse crop diseases, says Kelly Turkington, a AAFC plant pathologist and chair of the PCDMN.

While the PCDMN has an excellent website launched in mid-2024, it also offers a crop disease reporting tool available for use on smartphones — first, to help farmers identify diseases in their crops, then if they so wish, with another click they can add that sighting to the larger disease map for the benefit of other producers and agronomists.

The Quick Disease Reporter Tool is available on an app. Farmers need to download the Survey 123 app (for Apple or Android) from ArcGIS, which builds interactive online maps. Next, scan a QR code for the reporter tool (it’s an app within an app).

The tool is designed to be used in the field, says Turkington, who is based at the Lacombe Research and Development Centre in central Alberta.

Once on the app, farmers looking at suspected disease symptoms can identify the crop type, suggest a specific disease, and take at least one digital picture of what they’re looking at. This can all be done without internet service.

When internet service is available, the app digitally tags the photo to the municipality, not the farmer’s field. The information is verified before a diagnosis and the municipality is added to an online map. Producers can submit the information anonymously or request a chat with a disease specialist.

“If producers chose to report a disease it doesn’t identify their farm, just the municipality, so producer confidentially is protected,” Turkington says.

“Our main message is to first of all let farmers know that the website for the disease monitoring network is available. It provides a great deal of information in terms of managing crop diseases.”

Launched in mid-2024, the PCDMN’s website provides information — text and photos — on disease identification, as well as disease risk assessment and best management practices for dealing with those diseases, Turkington says.

Key files include in-season updates, cereal rust risk, surveillance protocols and scouting tips. There’s also a free subscription option, which provides news and disease alerts directly to your email address.

Here are direct links to some of features on the PCDMN website:

• In-season updates
• PCDMN cereal rust risk reports
• Scouting protocols
• Scouting tips
• An in-season update for 2024 for the PCDMN Quick Disease Reporter Tool
• To subscribe

The scouting tips on the site include Disease Scouting Playing Cards — panels describing common cereal, oilseed and pulse crop diseases along with clear, colour photos depicting different stages of each disease.

MORE INFO: What’s the Prairie Biovigilance Network?

Brent McCallum, a researcher at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Morden, Man., is leading a diverse group of experts in plant pathology, entomology, weed science, economics and agronomy in creating a network to share knowledge about the range of pests affecting Western Canadian field crops.

This collaborative effort has been dubbed the Prairie Biovigilance Network, with the goal of helping researchers and farmers quickly and holistically minimize crop losses due to weeds, disease and insects.

It’s hoped the multidisciplinary approach will help everyone better understand new agricultural farming practices, new crops and the impact of climate change on plant health and combat the negative effects of newly introduced pests.

The PBN involves researchers working together but also relies heavily on input from producers.

“We want to raise awareness and get producers participating with us,” says McCallum. “We don’t just do this work in isolation, it’s something we need to do with the producers. They’re the ones who are on the front lines and generally the first to notice pests cropping up in their fields — their contributions to the network are crucial.”

According to AAFC, “biovigilance relies on a continuous cycle of awareness, identification, assessment, and understanding … to ensure that solving one problem doesn’t lead to another.”

“The idea of the network is to break down the silos of individual pest management programs and create an integrated, holistic and collaborative approach to managing pests,” McCallum says. Hopefully the new approach will help to mitigate potential threats from plant diseases, weed species and insects before they become much bigger, more costly problems.

With the co-operation of a multi-disciplinary team of AAFC research scientists, the focus is on improving co-ordination of pest surveillance programs in Western Canada, helping producers to respond quickly and efficiently to crop pests with reduced environmental impact and fewer unintended effects.

Within the overall structure of the Prairie Biovigilance Network, there are three other networks monitoring more specific crop pests. They include the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network (insects), the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network and the Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network.

Along with McCallum, researchers involved in the network include Vincent Hervet, an entomologist also at AAFC Morden, specializing in insect pests affecting stored crops; Meghan Vankosky, entomologist at AAFC Saskatoon, focusing on integrated pest management of pulse and oilseed insects; Charles Geddes, at AAFC Lethbridge, a researcher in weed ecology and cropping systems, specializing in herbicide resistant weeds; and Kelly Turkington, at AAFC Lacombe, a plant pathologist focusing on diseases in cereal and oilseed crops.

The post How farmers can help map, monitor and forecast pest outbreaks appeared first on Grainews.

The app allows a farm manager to go back over information that was collected during field passes, analyzing and comparing it to later yield or scouting information — “so there are multiple facets of Panorama’s functionality,” says Matthew Nelson, software engineering lead at PTx, the smart-farming and autonomy arm of Agco.

“One is agronomic insights, which is really driving the ability to take that full data set that your equipment was already measuring and that you saw in the cab, but optimizing it for after-the-fact analysis.”

That analysis provides the ability to look at individual inputs and changes in application rates or methods in isolation, to help determine their overall impact on yield or other in-field results.

“Say you’re curious about the impact of one variable on a specific outcome,” he says. “We want to make it easy to just add a quick filter and see how yield changes when you look at that variable.”

Panorama offers different “filters” that allow a user to isolate differences in a variety of seeding or application passes and measure how that has affected conditions in the field or the crop’s yield.

It also supports connection to the John Deere Operations Centre and Climate FieldView.

“One thing that we’ve been working on is a way to create filters,” Nelson adds.

“Let’s say I want to know my yield by my (planting) population, but I only want to know that when I’m looking at yield by hybrid and I only want to know that when I’m looking at a particular population range.

“So you can just set 30,000 and 35,000 population range and that will filter out all of the field that doesn’t match that criteria. We’re adding the ability to, for example, pick a row and say ‘What was the yield by hybrid?’ or ‘What was the yield by population for this row?’”

Panorama can also be paired with Precision Planting’s SymphonyVision system, in which cameras can be mounted on a spray boom to take images on site that can later be used for scouting a field without leaving the farm office.

“When you finish a spray pass with SymphonyVision, Panorama lets you take a look at both randomly-situated photos from across the field as a sample, just to get a baseline of what’s going on — but it also is triggering on particular thresholds. If it notices a problem like a particularly high weed severity, you can look at it right there, zoom in on the exact plant that was your concern before you’ve even left your shop, and then later on you can follow up.”

A feature that will soon be added to Panorama is the ability to send changes to a machine setting to the field, where they can quickly be downloaded by an operator.

“We’re going to start down a path of letting the user configure their machine from Panorama,” Nelson says. “That means, before heading out to the field, operators can remotely set up prescriptions and boundaries, reducing setup time and ensuring everything is ready to go.

“At the same time, dealers and owners can use remote diagnostics to quickly identify issues, so if something isn’t right, they can help get things back on track faster.”

Panorama is available on a subscription basis for US$500 per year. There are no per-acre charges, and multiple people in an operation can have access to it under one subscription.

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James Tansey, an insect pest management specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, urged growers to be vigilant, even though grasshopper numbers were relatively low in many parts of the province in 2024. The one exception was the province’s southwest.

There were two main reasons for those lower numbers overall. Cool, wet conditions in the spring slowed the embryonic development of several insect pests including grasshoppers. Those damp conditions also led to a rise in naturally occurring fungal diseases such as Entomophaga grylli, which can be lethal to grasshoppers and help keep their numbers in check.

The concern now is that hot, dry conditions in many parts of the province in mid to late summer and well into the fall of 2024 provided ideal conditions for female grasshoppers to lay their eggs, says Tansey. That could lead to a large increase in the province’s grasshopper population if conditions are warm and dry this coming spring.

“If we get another warm spring like we saw in 2023, then we could certainly see a significant increase in grasshoppers again,” Tansey says.

“Are we going to see the numbers like we saw in 2023? Unlikely, but it could still be a major regional issue. I think growers need to keep their eyes open, so they’re not surprised if we do have a long, dry spring.”

Tansey says it could have been a much different story about grasshopper pressure in 2024 had last the spring been warm and dry. In the few parts of the province where conditions were warm and dry, very high numbers of eggs were placed in the ground and grasshopper populations in those locations “took hold with enthusiasm and they really sped through… development relatively quickly.”

There are more than 80 different species of grasshoppers present in the Prairies but only a handful pose a risk to crops, Tansey told the audience at the Agronomy Update.

The migratory grasshopper has historically been one of Saskatchewan’s major pests but has been supplanted recently by the two-striped grasshopper.

One of the main differences between the two species is that migratory grasshoppers are ambivorous and will eat “anything green that’s not nailed down” while their two-striped counterparts are folivorous and prefer broad-leafed crops such as canola and pulses.

Also on radar

Another insect pest Tansey says growers should be on guard against this coming spring is Hessian flies: small, mosquito-like insects that pose a serious threat to cereal crops such as wheat, barley and rye. They can cause serious damage to a crop and are considered one of the worst cereal pests in the world.

Tansey says Hessian flies had not been reported as a significant pest in Saskatchewan since around 2013 or 2014, but the province recorded a significant uptick in their numbers in 2023, which continues to be a cause for concern. Significant populations were noted in North Battleford, Demaine, Leroy, Carstairs and Shaunavon in 2023.

One of the most common signs that Hessian flies are present in a crop is lodging. Tansey says if the stem of a plant is broken off at its second or third node the damage was likely cause by the tiny flies. However, if a cereal plant’s stem is broken near its first node, the damage was likely caused by wheat stem sawflies.

There are no pesticides registered to control Hessian flies. The primary means of controlling them is regular crop rotation.

Tansey adds that tillage can be effective in helping to control Hessian fly populations but “tillage comes with its own challenges, so you need to weigh that as well.”

ALSO: Gophers go further

A vertebrate pest plaguing Saskatchewan growers for some time now is Richardson’s ground squirrels — more commonly known as gophers.

They were particularly a problem for the province’s canola growers in 2024. Last spring’s cool, wet conditions meant canola crops were slow to develop in many regions. Gophers normally tend to congregate near the edge of a canola field because they don’t like tall plants that can block their sightlines.

However, because last year’s crop was late to develop, they were able to move further into fields and establish more of a presence.

“They were munching on those seedlings and pretty severely in some cases,” says Tansey.

Tansey says it’s too soon to say how much of threat Richardson’s ground squirrels will pose in 2025 and it will depend in part on what kind of weather the province experiences this spring. He points out the province is continuing to track their presence through an online survey available to farmers. He is currently working on a model that will use AI to incorporate that data and provide some predictive power about where they could pose a threat to crops.

In 2023, the federal Pest Management Regulatory Authority deregistered the use of strychnine to control gophers. The Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture has since been studying the effectiveness of some alternative products that farmers can use in place of strychnine.

Tansey says several zinc phosphide products such as Burrow Oat Bait and ZC Rodent Oat Bait appear to be statistically similar to strychnine in terms of their efficiency. An added bonus of their use is that zinc phosphide breaks down into gas which later escapes the cadaver and leaves little in the way of residue in a field. Some anticoagulants, including Rozol RTU Field Rodent Bait and Ramik Green, have also been shown to be effective.

The key to using any kind of poison bait products, Tansey says, is to install them early before crops start to emerge and gophers develop “bait shyness.”

The post Grasshopper threat remains for Saskatchewan crops appeared first on Grainews.

Sabourin was speaking to an audience of farmers and agronomists at St. Jean Farm Days, an agricultural event at St. Jean Baptiste, Man., about 60 km south of Winnipeg.

“A lot of promises have made around big data,” Sabourin says. “Huge venture capital dollars were invested into big data, and we were going to revolutionize farming, but it’s fallen short of that expectation.”

A major reason for this, he says, is that collecting good-quality data remains challenging. Sabourin highlights how variability in fields, and across farms, complicates data analysis. He pointed to the huge variability in terms of rainfall that can exist within a field from one end to the other — not to mention the differences from a farm 20 miles away, or in a neighbouring province.

The result, he says, is a lack of reliable comparisons due to insufficient quality of data.

Sabourin’s company addresses this by starting with small, localized data before scaling to larger datasets. By focusing on small geographies and comparing data at the field and farm levels, farmers can achieve more accurate insights before considering regional trends.

Antara also pools data from its clients to derive what they call “area insights,” covering a 20- to 25-mile radius from their home base.

“We want to be able to compare apples to apples as best we can,” he adds.

Soil testing

Soil testing is one of the simplest and most effective tools for gathering on-farm data.

“I’m a firm believer in soil sampling and doing annual testing, to establish trend lines,” Sabourin says.

For example, he says, when he looks at differences in something like phosphate, a non-mobile nutrient that wouldn’t be expected to change much year over year, he will sometimes track huge differences these numbers. Identifying those trends can reveal important insights.

“We’re growing some heavier phosphate-using crops like corn and soybeans. We’re starting to see on a lot of the fields a trending decline in capacity levels,” Sabourin says. “We’re still well above our critical levels, but it is a trend that we need to keep watching.”

By keeping a spreadsheet that tracks soil samples, farmers can use this information to improve decision-making.

Keeping a nutrient balance sheet that tracks the crops grown, their yields and the fertilizer applied from year to year is also low-hanging fruit in terms of data collection.

Sabourin references an example where one customer who had been growing soybeans for several years, without applying any phosphate, was shocked at how depleted his soils had become. After 10 years, he had mined 170 pounds of phosphate out of his field.

Because it was identified, he’s now able to take corrective action to build it back up.

Sabourin also sees untapped potential in yield monitoring, and noted many farmers have yield monitors on their combines but don’t use them. By analyzing yield variability within a field, farmers can identify areas that need attention.

Driving up yield, driving down costs

The next question farmers must ask themselves is how they can increase yield or reduce expenses.

“This is where the strategy comes into play about budgeting nutrients across the rotation with something like phosphate,” Sabourin says. “I tell my growers to look at what their removal is over five to 10 years, and then advise them, that’s the amount that they should be applying every year.”

However, because you can’t apply all the phosphate at once with canola, farmers must apply it in smaller doses, either in separate applications or in a different year. Sabourin noted many farmers opt to apply extra phosphate in advance.

“They’ll double-fertilize ahead of corn because they’re going to follow it up with canola,” he explains. “They’ll be putting down a percentage of their phosphate ahead of the corn that’s really meant for the canola crop.”

Other data sources

LIDAR elevation maps provide another affordable source of field-level data farmers can access through the Aerial Photography Library portal on the Manitoba Conservation website.

“You can go in there and look through the archives of satellite or aerial photography going back to the 1930s,” Sabourin says. “Often you can lay this map over top of the regular map, and you see why the farmer would have separated things out in different paddocks and different areas.”

Weather stations are another useful tool, but can require an investment of $1,500 to $3,000.

“They hook up to the internet, and you can have all of the data live on your phone,” Sabourin says.

But the ranges for these weather stations are limited. In many cases a farm might need more than one of the units to cover their entire farm. Those expenses can add up.

However, with Antara’s pooled network, the company ran 15 stations this year and all the participants could see weather from all the different stations, spreading that cost over multiple farms.

“We wanted to have a weather station within three miles of all the fields in our system,” he says.

Of course all of this requires a good system of record-keeping. A logbook or spreadsheet that tracks data such as seeding depth, placement, plant counts and weed or insect pressure is invaluable for understanding field performance.

“How it came out of the ground, what was the seed bed like, residue management — these are very useful to come back at harvest time to say ‘Why did this field yield more or less than that field?’”

The post Dollars from data appeared first on Grainews.

“This is something we’re really excited about,” CNH’s chief digital and information officer Marc Kermish says. “We realize more and more farmers are on the go and need to manage their farm operations from anywhere they’re at.

“So we spent the last number of months rethinking how we can offer access to all the data and systems in the vehicles that are running at any given time. We really invested in our online platforms and launched a new native mobile app for both iOS and Android.

“We call it FieldOps. It’s not branded to Case IH or New Holland per se. It’s the same system no matter what tractor you’re running with us.”

RELATED: Improved connectivity coming soon from CNH

The platform allows real-time monitoring of vehicle display views, including telematics data; farmers can see as-planted maps and define field boundaries. They can also do path planning and interact with service manuals and other data sets provided by CNH, all while on the go.

The platform will allow direct data input from any compatible source, which will allow users to integrate all their on-farm data.

“It has simplified navigation, easy-to-use buttons, ability for light and dark modes, being able to use it with a gloved hand, et cetera,” Kermish says.

“We’ve been in beta this past winter and through the spring. Beta will run right up to mid- to late summer. We’ll open it up to the general public as soon as we feel we’ve worked out all the kinks.”

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“Half of humanity is already in the danger zone,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said earlier this week. And yet, “one-third of the world’s people, mainly in least developed countries and small island developing states, are still not covered by early warning systems.”

Today, there are about five times the number of weather-related disasters than there were in the 1970s. These droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms have killed more than two million people and wrought $3.64 trillion in losses worldwide since 1970, World Meteorological Organization data show (all figures US$).

With the trend expected to worsen as global temperatures continue to climb, “there is a need to invest $1.5 billion” in the next five years to predict when extreme events might occur, WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said.

It was not immediately clear how much money the U.N. has allocated for the project, part of which was announced at last year’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.

Africa is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, which also can impact food security. Parts of the continent are ravaged frequently by drought, cyclones or intense rainfall, but 60 per cent of the population lives in areas that are not covered by early-warning weather systems.

While natural disasters have become more frequent, warning systems have helped cut death tolls by some 76 per cent since the 1970s by giving people time to prepare for or flee oncoming danger, or by prompting governments to marshal aid.

Such systems can also help protect economies. A 24-hour storm warning, for example, can help people reduce damage by roughly 30 per cent, according to a 2019 report by the Global Commission on Adaptation. The same report suggested that spending $800 million on early-warning systems in developing countries alone would avoid up to $16 billion in annual losses.

Still, “we must not stop at just preventing deaths,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based think tank. “If people survive a climate disaster but then are left to fend for themselves with their homes and livelihoods destroyed, it’s a meagre blessing.”

— Gloria Dickie is a global climate and environment correspondent for Reuters in London, England.

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