Variable Rate Technology: Make the Most Out of Each Farmable Acre
We farm in a time where working smarter, rather than harder, is essential to running a successful, sustainable business, according to Decisive Farming at PrecisionAg. There’s an incredible push in agriculture today for you to balance economics on the farm with environmental practices that keep farmland healthy for generations to come.
The key to achieving this balance lies in using agtech to increase production and manage costs from every acre, while reducing waste at the same time. Precision agriculture is helping farmers like you understand more about your fields than ever before, while incorporating variable rate (VR) technology to up productivity and minimize waste.
Precision agriculture is helping farmers understand more about their fields than ever before, while incorporating variable rate technology to up productivity and minimize waste.
While Prairie growers have become more familiar with VR fertilizer strategy over the years – precisely placing the right applications for nutrient uptake in the right areas of the field, VR seeding – adjusting seeding rates to the growing conditions in every zone on your farm, might be a newer concept. However, the ideas are similar, and they answer the challenges around increasing yield while managing costs.
The key to using VR technology to optimize your acreage production is extremely zone management specific and that’s why selecting a proven program is important. With anywhere from five-to-seven zones in a field, all with differing soil characteristics and topography, each must be treated very differently. In contrast to broadly applying nutrients and seeding in the same ratios everywhere, VR technology gives you precise control and measurements for exactly what you put into every zone on your farm.
The fact that this technology is incredibly advantageous is easy to see, but it never hurts to recap a few key benefits. Keep in mind, these advantages are subject to environmental factors and management practices on your farm:
- Optimized yields. This is typically the primary goal when adopting VR technology. Working with a trusted professional, you’ll more clearly determine your yield goals, whether it’s greater yield overall, in a specific area, at a certain price point or simply consistency.
- Increased crop quality. VR technology is all about understanding the ways you may get better quality, increased protein or more uniform establishment across all your acres.
- Better standability. That uniform establishment also delivers a more uniform plant stand. This helps reduce lodging and improves harvest timing as well as fungicide timing and control of disease management.
- Better time management. Rather than spending time during the busy growing season making decisions on the fly, you’ll have planned your season with a tailor-made prescription for what and where you’re applying and seeding. With your VR prescription loaded into your equipment, once the weather and timing are right, you’ll hit the field knowing everything’s ready to go.
- Digital records of the farm. Digitally collected and stored information makes historical learning easy so you can keep improving your efficiency and protecting your investment dollars.
- More sustainable field management. While you’re protecting your investment using VR technology, you’re also protecting the environment and farming sustainably. When you understand and adapt to your soil’s variable qualities, you’ll prevent application loss to volatilization, denitrification, and leaching.
- Traceability of crop production. VR technology’s digitized information and memory cards where your prescriptions are installed make it easy to trace the history of everything applied to your fields. This provides the traceability and transparency the industry is increasingly demanding.
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