Better Farming – September 2016

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Better Farming September 2016 Farm News First > 27
approaches. Because of this detail,
“we can put a tractor on the same
pattern every year. The tractor is driv-
ing over the same spot, year after
year.” Sticking to the same patterns so
precisely reduces soil compaction,
boosts yield and promotes overall soil
health, he says. “It allows you to apply
bands of fertilizer in a given area for
precise application.”
The potential for guiding and
operating agricultural equipment in
the future is immense.
“In the automotive industry, we’re
already seeing automatic parking and
vehicle-assisted braking. This tech-
nology will transfer to the agricultur-
al space,” says Bose.
Bose envisions the day when
driverless planters will do variable
seeding. Farmers would control the
planters remotely using a tablet and a
pre-programmed pattern based on
historic yield data.
Data helps boost yields
Even right now, however, the technol-
ogy is making a fundamental and
beneficial impact to farmers’ bottom
lines.
“At a recent presentation I made, a
farmer came up to me after and said
the variable rate seeded everything,”
recalled Redmond. “The difference on
corn – which is what everyone is
talking about – was about $9 an acre.
Big deal. But on some specialty crops,
like edible beans, the difference in
yield was $36 an acre. This guy had a
thousand acres of edible beans.”
Don’t dismiss the impact on corn
too quickly, though. DuPont Pio-
neer’s research and development
people have done the tests and run
the numbers. Comparisons of
variable rate seeding versus constant
seeding at 556 locations across North
America have shown increased corn
yields of between eight and 13
bushels an acre.
Yield information can also give
direction on decisions like hybrid
selection, chemical application,
planting density and more.
“It used to be that we’d have one
or two hybrids on a farm,” says Blaine
Calkins, Encirca Services manager at
DuPont Pioneer in Johnston, Iowa.
“Now, we are talking potentially
multiple hybrids within one field.”
Combining multiple hybrids with
variable rate planting will boost plot
productivity, he adds.
continued on page 30
have two or three years or more of
yield data. It’s valuable information.
The more you understand about
tracking yields, the better. Ten years
from now, we may find a missing
piece in that data if we can extract
information from it.”
The volume and the different types
of information that can be collected
can be overwhelming to a typical
farmer. For that reason, you need to
surround yourself with trusted
advisors, Redmond advises.
“You’re dead in the water if you
don’t,” he says. “When we first started,
we’d find farmers who didn’t know
how to work their yield monitor
properly. These were guys with
Masters and PhD level education, and
they wanted to do it all. But they have
to build support relationships with
the equipment dealer, software
representative and agronomist.”
Information overload
The downside to all that data collec-
tion, however, is its sheer volume,
Calkins says. “There’s so much data
(that) farmers out there probably
A farmer and an advisor track the emergence of a corn crop using a tablet
and GPS.
Blaine Calkins
Photo: Courtesy DuPont Pioneer
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