Behind the Lines - August/September 2015
Saturday, August 8, 2015
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines technology as the study of mechanical arts and applied sciences and its application to practical tasks in industry.
It is clear that technology drives agriculture in Ontario. Look into any dairy barn where robotic devices milk cows and push around manure and feed, or at fields where tractors are guided by auto-steering devices. Some technologies arrive ahead of their time. And that may well have been the case more than a decade ago with electrical conductivity (EC) scanning of fields. The current question: has such hi-tech scanning come of age now?
The genesis of this story came in mid-winter with senior staff editor Don Stoneman's conversation with Huron County crop consultant Mervyn Erb. Erb and other crop consultants are looking at ways to add value to the work they do for crop-growing customers, and soil mapping fields might fit the bill.
Electrical conductivity is not only finding a place in Ontario. The United Nations General Assembly declared 2015 as the International Year of Soil and, in a March press release, the Soil Science Society of America noted that electromagnetic soil mapping, one of a number of EC technologies, was one of the ways that farmers could use geo-referencing tools to subdivide large fields into smaller management zones to reduce increasingly expensive, wasteful and sometimes polluting broadcast fertilizer applications. There are other tools, aerial photography being among them.
Stoneman wrote about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, more often known as drones, last year (see Better Farming, October 2014). Is EC technology more attractive to farmers seeking to reduce their input costs and maximize crop yields? That story starts on page 10.
Conventional soil testing is evolving, too. Did you know, for example, that there is a soil health test to measure changes in soil's physical and biological properties? In his Yield Matters column beginning on page 36, crop writer Dale Cowan challenges you to "be adventurous."
With all of the concerns that have been raised about consumer indebtedness in Canada, longtime columnist Barry Wilson questions why there are not also alarm bells ringing over the tripling of Canadian farm debt in the last two decades. Debt isn't nearly as high in the United States, he notes, wondering why it seems to be acceptable here. Wilson's The Hill column starts on page 48.
Over the years, we've awarded dozens of weather stations as prizes in our popular Crop Scene Investigation series and the feedback we get tells us that many farmers are keenly interested in weather monitoring and forecasting. Phil the Forecaster Chadwick's column about cuts to Environment Canada's volunteer weather observer program therefore caught our eye because farmers have traditionally played a big role in this activity. If you are curious about becoming an observer or simply want to learn more about this fascinating tradition, you'll find Chadwick's column on page 46.
Weather data aren't the only focus on farms. Crop yield information is becoming more complex and more important, but it's not always reliable. On page 38, Mike Duncan and Sarah Lepp provide you with a few tools you can use to check the reliability of the information you get about yield distribution. BF
ROBERT IRWIN & DON STONEMAN