State Of Precision Ag 2014: Guiding Users, Not Just Equipment

In just the two years since CropLife® last visited with a number of retailers for this report, the precision ag landscape has changed noticeably. Variable-rate services and vital improvements in hardware have continued to develop. A new crop of players and technologies have emerged. In fact, companies from outside agriculture have brought fresh ideas and expertise to the table. And exploding wireless capabilities are making information transfer easier than ever.

On one level, you could say it’s all about “The Maps” — yield, variable-rate and the like — and the data needed to create them. But it’s also about the clear road map that many growers still desperately need to make the pieces of site-specific farming work for them.

Actually, CropLife’s editors are seeing that agriculture is solidly “mapping” a return to the promise of core ideas envisioned 25 to 30 years ago. Much of what precision ag users wanted to do back in the 1980s — creating maps, making decisions based on field data, engineering continuous improvement — were not technologically practical then, but they are now.

Clearly, adoption continues to expand. “I would guess 70%-80% of today’s farmers are using some component of precision farming, either on their own or provided by their input suppliers,” says Dr. Harold Reetz of Reetz Agronomics, Monticello, IL. Because of this diverse user base, we wanted to see what some progressive growers are doing with the technologies, many of them taking the reins almost completely for their site-specific programs. Included here are their experiences and comments, as well as retailers’ thoughts.

Wireless Wow Factor

Getting information into and out of the field has gotten considerably easier. “Cell phones are giving way to smartphones, and iPads are replacing the spiral notebook in the farmer’s pocket,” says Reetz. “Once they get hooked, they don’t go back.”

The same could be said for dealers. Retailers and growers both are equipping their teams with smartphones and tablets, especially iPads. Employees can reach home base or “The Cloud,” if needed.

Cody Miller, precision agriculture specialist and CCA with Larsen Cooperative, a part of CHS, New London, WI, says his company is starting to utilize wireless data transfer with AgLeader’s AgFiniti. He feels being able to send prescriptions to application machines in the field is going to be a great time savings.

Grower Kris Tom of Tom Farms, Leesburg, IN, uses JDLink and wireless data transfer to send and receive information to sprayers. His team no longer has to wait until the end of the season to see their records, but rather, they review jobs within a few hours. They can make decisions on-the-fly instead of waiting two to three weeks or a month.

In addition, mobile devices are being used for sales and troubleshooting, for soil sampling, for scouting and even for remote control of irrigation pivots. In fact, Precision Planting has been using tablets as monitors in planter tractors, taking the place of monitors ten times the cost of a tablet.

Thanks to wireless, Central Valley Ag’s Advanced Cropping System (ACS) team, sales groups and customers all have access to moisture probe data — and monitor and control pivots from a smartphone or iPad. “The ability to have information and data available to our employees and customers in the field, at the touch of a button, is helping us make more informed and timely decisions on the farm,” says Glen Franzluebbers, technology director at the Nebraska-based firm.

At presstime, Wheat Growers, Aberdeen, SD, had mobile tablets in 50% of its fleet, which will grow to 100% come fall. Big picture, company managers see huge potential for efficiencies with the tablets, plus custom applicators’ jobs are made easier. “A paperless system means less time doing the things drivers are not necessarily fond of doing (paperwork) and getting across more acres each day,” says Brent Wiesenburger, precision ag manager.

In addition, all 56 of the Wheat Growers’ sales agronomists have tablets, synced with price sheets, marketing materials and training videos. This spring, they’ll be used to release fields for application at several facilities. In the future, plans are to offer complete recommendation documentation on them, with access to historical data as well.

The tablets can hold manuals for every equipment line, says Larsen Coop’s Miller, plus they can be used to create fertilizer orders anywhere.

Mobile phone apps simply help the Larsen staff “do a better job.” For instance, one weather app helps custom applicators get the information they need to fill out reports and allows them to make sure there will be enough time to get a job in before a rainfall. Video calls provide diagnostics on equipment or verify fertilizer orders.

Steve Cubbage, president of Prime Meridian LLC, an independent precision data management company based in Nevada, MO, is particularly pleased with how use of the cloud is moving in to ag. “It will break down barriers to the sharing of data that we’ve had to live with since precision ag’s inception,” he says.

In fact, in the past two years wireless technologies and cloud computing have started to converge, he adds. “I think they are going to work in tandem to do a lot of great things for the industry that we’ve been waiting a long time on.”

Indeed, retailers are moving varying levels of their businesses to the cloud, for access by both staff and customers. “It is rapidly becoming the method of choice for storing information, accessing special software and sharing various kinds of communication,” says Reetz.

Larsen Cooperative stores maps on cloud-based systems so growers can have access to them. Also stored: internal data for soil sampling. It works well for growers who have monitors that are capable of sending and keeping data on cloud-based systems so that data can be retrieved at any time.

Admittedly, if a retailer’s territory is in a rural environment, a service team can be limited by how good the Internet connection is, points out Aaron Grote, GIS manager at United Prairie LLC, Tolono, IL. Even though his company operates in a fairly populated area, reps sometimes still can’t get a good signal. “Without 4G, a lot of Web-based programs become painfully hard to wait on,” he says.

Variable-Rate Continues To Mature

Wireless and cloud technologies have enhanced aspects of variable-rate services.

Miller says his team is writing more variable-rate (VR) nitrogen and seeding prescriptions than ever. In fact, requests for VR planting prescriptions are “exploding,” whereas two years ago, there was hardly any talk of them in his area. Now growers feel they’re necessary to maximize yields. New OEM technology and outfits of older planters with equipment from Precision Planting or Ag Leader have made the prescriptions possible.

At Three Rivers Company, Earlville, IA, precision farming technologist Sam Wilson helps growers outfit their planters with the needed equipment to execute prescriptions, and he assists them in understanding the data and information they will need in order to make a good seeding prescription.

Some retailers are not sure if VR seeding will really pay off, as in the case of United Prairie’s Grote. On his region’s “good central Illinois soil,” water tends to be the largest contributor to yield loss. But some customers with marginal, rolling ground near rivers tried — and now swear by — custom seeding recommendations Grote’s team provided. The growers have actually started planting every acre with the technology.

A number of growers are keeping an eye on variable hybrid planting. Grower Keith Gingerich, owner of Gingerich Farms, Lovington, IL, believes when the technology is available, multi-hybrid planting will help him more than VR seeding, which he just started using last year.

Brian Watkins, Watkins Farms, Kenton, OH says he’s seen a prototype machine and believes the approach makes sense, especially in his part of northwest Ohio where there are two dominant soil types but lots of variation within fields.

This season, his team will be using a sensor-based VR nitrogen program for sidedress applications on corn. “We’ll be going in when we have a canopy using the OptRx system,” he says. “We’ve watched people do it for a couple of years and are going to give it a shot.”

Gingerich says VR sidedress applications have provided a huge return through yield and reductions in cost.

But even with tried and true VR fertilization, Reetz says the industry will need to focus more on the agronomic questions. “We need to revisit the research to define what the optimum rate of each input is and what interactions come into play,” he says.

Data Processing Painful

Since data is the cornerstone of variable rate programs, it’s no wonder any bumps here affect adoption.

“Monsanto found this out when they first rolled out their FieldScripts program,” says Cubbage. “They were looking for producers with three good years of yield data and current field fertility information — and they found it hard to find growers that even met that criteria.”

There is an “extreme lack of understanding of what to do with all this data,” laments Three Rivers’ Wilson. He thinks growers have done a great job of collecting it, but they’re not using it to their advantage. “I think the spark that will really get growers to utilize their data will come from a negative economic change,” he says.

Franzluebbers has found that equipment, mapping and variable rate applications are becoming second nature for many of his customers, but agrees data is where they hit a road block. Figuring out what to do with all the data collected over the years and how to generate value from it is continuing to be a challenge.

Grower Michael Kinner, Kinner Farms, New Berlin, IL, has committed to finding that value himself. He saves yield monitor data, then each winter attends a class with other farmers at Lincoln Land Community College (eight sessions) to go through the data collected. He says they clean up data and yield maps and learn to write their own prescriptions for fertilizer, seeding, etc. And fellow growers can compare what works and what doesn’t.

Miller says Larsen Coop’s team always helps growers process their data. He admits there are many monitors “across the countryside” that have years’ worth of useful data that never gets looked at. The information Larsen does process helps staff verify treatments and gives growers report cards. Agronomists can also identify areas in the field like wet spots or clay knolls that they can bring into the VR planting prescription process. In addition, planting data they gather is useful for crop reporting as well as evaluating planter performance.

“The most benefit is when we can take and layer multiple operation data and years together to come up with cropping management decisions,” says Miller. “I feel users should take every opportunity to look for trends in data.”

One of the biggest problems with data management is that growers don’t know how or have never been taught how to even collect “good data,” says Cubbage. The issue can be as simple as farmers naming fields or a certain variety at planting. The industry needs standards, and he feels a lot of data, still to this day, that’s collected is probably not up to the standards many data managers would like to see.

A good dealer will be proactive instead of reactive in this area, says Cubbage. A goal would be 1) to make sure GPS field boundaries are in place and 2) to create a standardized list of a grower’s farm fields, varieties and inputs. This database would then be loaded into all the different monitors on the farm, whether it’s the planter tractor or fertilizer truck down at the coop. Drivers would have a predefined pick list of varieties on their screen, for instance, which would save time when the data comes back.

This approach “is something we’ve really trumpeted, and I think anything the industry can do to streamline that is going to be very, very beneficial in the long run,” says Cubbage.

He is hopeful that as wireless technology becomes more widespread, a lot of prepping of monitors and receiving of data can be done remotely. To date, he has found the most effective and promising vehicle for this approach so far is AgLeader’s AgFiniti.

Cubbage is concerned that companies are marketing data management platforms like this directly to growers, again assuming they understand and actually do a lot of the data handling themselves. “But producers are looking for someone like an Edward Jones guy to independently be a broker on his behalf to really manage his data,” says Cubbage. “I think there’s going to be a movement toward that type of model in the future, toward data brokers or data accountants, as I call them.”

Wiesenburger says his team actively tries to work with and store data for customers, but admits the vast size of his coop has been a challenge — and he “will be the first to give the group a poor grade in this area.” He is looking to wireless technologies to help solve the problem and ultimately give growers reports needed to break yield barriers using their data.

Growers would like to have all their farm data in one place that is easy to access, use and understand — so they can get some useful, valuable answers to questions about their farms. “We as ag retailers have a great opportunity to assist them in reaching these goals, but it will require a significant commitment on our part to get there,” says Franzluebbers.

Indiana’s Tom is looking forward to the day when information from all his business segments, from planting to irrigation to grain inventory, can all flow into one place. He sees some companies working toward that goal, but “right now it’s in the hands of the manufacturers and retailers. They really need to open up and say to growers, ‘It’s your data, if you want it flow to company x, y or z, it’s yours, you can do whatever you want.’ It is our data, and we should be able to do what we want with it.”

Cubbage is concerned that current go-to precision management sites offered by various manufacturers are being considered a silver bullet. Whether it’s climate.com or myjohndeere.com or Slingshot Online, these sites can be no different than having an operation’s data scattered among PC’s, as is often the case at many businesses, he notes. No matter how it’s managed, Cubbage would encourage growers to keep track where their data goes — and keep a copy at hand.

Kinner agrees. While he says he is not paranoid about the cloud, for instance, he is nervous about going to a completely cloud-based mapping program. “I like the security and peace of mind knowing that I have a copy of my database on my computer that I can back up as often as I like,” he says. And while the Internet service he uses from a local elevator is dependable most of the time, he doesn’t like the idea that if the system is down, he can’t access his information.

New Stuff

Despite ongoing data issues, the past two years have brought a number of technical advances, and our retailers/growers are trying them all.

Three Rivers’ Wilson is excited about the way planter technology is evolving in general, including the advances that allow units to adjust to changing conditions “in the blink of an eye.”

Some precision users are thrilled about the new downforce technologies on planters (not to mention current and upcoming advancements in seed meters, seed delivery, row cleaners and seed tubes). “No matter what we do throughout the growing season, everything revolves around how quickly and uniformly the plants emerge,” says Franzluebbers.

The buzz about unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their role in precision ag continues this summer, as more in the industry get to see the units in action in fields. Reactions from precision specialists we talked with were mixed — from “game changer” to groan-worthy.

The pros? Wilson believes UAVs fill the gap between the inefficiency and difficulty of ground-based methods and the low resolution and timing limitations of satellite-based methods.

Cubbage says UAVs have already shown great potential as a scouting tool. One example in his work: A UAV image from one grower’s wheat field showed nearly 15% of his productive acres were lost due to poor drainage. It was a wake-up call that inputs put on those acres got him zero in returns.

Larsen Coop’s Miller says his team would like to be able to use UAVs for side-by-side comparisons, for crop scouting and for imagery for variable rate nitrogen applications.

Other retailers aren’t so optimistic. Earlier this year, Wiesenburger was “all giddy” and set to invest money in a UAV, plus hire an intern for the summer to fly it. Then buyer’s remorse set in before he even got the unit. He’s skeptical about the scalability of the technology and the complexity of — you guessed it — the data management.

However, Wiesenburger does see aerial-acquired imagery with manned aircraft gaining momentum in the next few years, with the technology’s ability to capture large amounts of data with one image.

United Prairie’s Grote believes UAVs will be great for large-scale evaluations, such as for downed corn, big planter or sprayer skips or hail damage. But they won’t be a substitute for finding anything going on below the canopy like weed, insect or disease issues.

Actually, Grote just wants a good NDVI image (Normalized Difference Vegetative Index which measures, in effect, the amount of green vegetation).

“If your goal is NDVI aerial imagery, I don’t really see the value in UAVs yet,” he says. “For them to take off, they need to do one or more of three things: save time, save money or be a much easier alternative to what we already have,” he says. UAVs haven’t passed these criteria yet.

Ohio grower Watkins is also a fan of imagery and is dabbling in the technology. He believes if users can get a “super high resolution” shot at the right time of year, it can be as good as a yield map. “Whether it’s from an airplane, drone or satellite, it’s going to be a tremendous tool,” he says.  Two issues that still need to be worked out: the cost to get such images and the software still needed to analyze the vast amount of data gathered.

A number of the new technologies focus on water, including moisture monitoring and variable rate irrigation. Central Valley Ag, Oakland, NE, has entered into its second season offering AquaSystems Soil Moisture Monitoring and VR irrigation and reports “great success” with the programs.

The importance of these precision developments is clear: Water is the number one factor determining yield, and it’s also “probably our least sustainable resource and needs to be managed properly,” says CVA’s Franzluebbers. He adds there will no doubt be more restrictions on water use in the future, so CVA’s AquaSystems programs will allow customers to position themselves successfully to deal with future changes in water management and regulations.

At his farm, Tom operates 90-plus pivots and utilizes the services of a company called AgSense to monitor and control irrigation. The system has variable rate functionality, but he says he hasn’t assessed enough data to be able to develop the right water “prescriptions” to answer varying environmental conditions.

Many of our grower/retailer contacts have enrolled in Climate Corp.’s free Basic package, which models plant growth based on weather conditions. In fact, at the time Tom spoke with CropLife, he had pulled up local Climate Corp. data, which showed temperatures were warm enough and conditions dry enough to go ahead and work or plant his Indiana fields. “We can formulate a plan instead of spending hours or days driving around looking at fields, waiting for things to dry out,” he says.

While measuring soil electrical conductivity (EC) is not a new technology, more growers have been giving VERIS technology another look, to help draw up VR prescriptions.

Watkins is anxious to see what will happen as more on-the-go measurement technologies mature. For instance, he is looking at the ability to gauge soil fertility with automated sensors and probes rather than sending samples to the lab. “It’s melding the equipment side with the agronomic side,” he points out.

More On Retailers’ Role

Unfortunately, all the “new stuff” can overwhelm some previously hesitant grower-users even more. Cubbage says that retailers and precision specialists assume too much when it comes to growers’ knowledge and vision for precision ag. “We assume that because we know a certain sector or type of technology, it’s already mainstream. There’s a serious lack of education and just the realization that growers really need to see a road map.”

Then too, real profitability of basic precision services such as grid soil sampling and basic yield mapping for dealers continues to be pressured by competition. In fact, it’s not unusual to find such services offered free, notes Cubbage. “There’s not much profit in free. And producers are finding free doesn’t get them much other than a pretty paper map instead of a long-term precision plan.”

Indeed, managing customer expectations can be a challenge in another area. Wheat Growers sells Trimble, AgLeader, Raven and Precision Planting hardware to growers and offers installation and support of all these products. Wiesenburger says his team is slowly learning not to create false expectations of what the technology can do. “We can’t be there at all times to help a producer measure ‘payback’ with all of this hardware. Quantifying a yield gain or profit margin to one piece of hardware or technology is hard to do from year to year.

He admits that as Wheat Growers’ yearly precision sales have increased, the firm’s profit margins as a percent associated with those sales have decreased. Indeed, as the technology gets more complex, it’s a challenge to continue an expected level of support of the product without incurring unexpected travel and employee costs to support those new installations.

Grote has found that every equipment company is offering equipment with some sort of VR capability, but most of them don’t adequately teach the grower how to use the equipment. Plus, they don’t have the agronomic knowledge to help the grower utilize it to its full potential. That’s where the retailer can come in, though staying up on the technical side of rigs can be very difficult, especially when dealing with multiple brands of equipment, controllers and monitors, he says.

Cory Rimbey with Illinois Valley Supply, Carrolton, IL, feels the pressure intensely, as he is the one-man precision department at his dealership. The company sells a range of precision ag hardware in a region Rimbey admits is somewhat behind on the technologies. Many growers manage smaller farms, some 600-700 acres, and yield monitors just arrived there about two years ago. Most planting equipment is still ground-driven, minimizing the possibility of variable rate seeding. And, growers are reluctant to spend the $10/acre to get their own FieldScripts recommendations. “Really, even with $5/bushel corn, you can justify the cost at even a 2 to 3 bushel per acre yield bump,” he notes.

Rimbey also struggles with developing a service plan for precision ag hardware. “How do you justify charging for a 15-minute to an hour stop to help a customer who has spent thousands of dollars in fertilizer, seed and chemicals with you?” he asks. It’s a question many others in his AgLeader peer group wrestle with. “Retail is so service-based and relationship-based,” he says.

At this point, Illinois Valley Supply is the only retailer in the area that offers precision services, setting the company apart from other local fertilizer retail suppliers.

Cubbage believes retailers need to seriously evaluate whether precision ag services should be a stand-alone department — with all the resources needed there — or if they’re going to be a “carrot at the end of the stick to sell more seed or fertilizer.” If it’s the latter, “you’re probably not serving the best overall interest of the end user,” he believes. “I know that’s a little harsh, but at the end of the day it comes down to focus — is it agronomy or something else?”

Retailers who hire precision support staff find it goes a long way to cementing their relationship with the farmer and maintaining customer loyalty, says Reetz. Field scouting services, nutrient management planning and overall support for system integration all help meet the customers’ needs and keep them coming in the door, he feels.

A specific suggestion for service, per Reetz: A retailer can assist the grower in designing on-farm tests to determine the proper seeding rates for different parts of his farm. Such help can be a very individualized answer for many customers. “On-farm tests produce the data needed to fit precision technologies to the farmer’s own particular soil-climate-management system — the fine-tuning that is critical to getting the benefits of site-specific, precision agriculture,” says Reetz.

Crossover Concerns

As precision has evolved even in the just the past two years, different segments of the industry have been crossing lines into new areas of expertise for them.

“We have to be very careful when we start playing in each other’s sandbox,” Cubbage says. He gives an example of when an iron dealer, in order to win a more exclusive relationship with a customer, starts making fertilizer recommendations, formerly the forte of the fertilizer dealer down the road. Then too, there’s been a real push by some in the seed business to own the “entire agronomy package from seed selection to fertility.”

Not everyone is happy about some companies’ move into the site-specific space. One retailer commented that Monsanto’s foray into precision is a major “watch out” for dealerships who already have mature systems.

“Many retailers have worked their tails off to develop precision ag programs that fit the specific geographical space they operate in,” he says. “Monsanto’s one-way solution does not fit on every acre, and it is one of those ‘black box’ agronomy programs we have worked so hard not to create. Now a major, well-respected company is offering a black box agronomy package we as retailers (their customers) are being asked to support. This goes against our ‘local agronomy’ approach to our individual market.”

He admits, though, that everyone will need to keep an eye on Monsanto’s work, especially with the firm’s recent acquisitions and creative ideas for future programs.

Indeed, Wilson sees the value in and is a dealer for Mon­santo, Precision Planting and Climate Corp. products. He’s also aware of the implications of the company’s business model. “Monsanto appears to be using these acquisitions to create an all-encompassing program that provides some benefit to the grower, while placing themselves in the position to reap the benefits of having the largest pool of research data in the industry,” he says.

Cubbage believes the most successful retailers will find partners for their precision ag business, with each member doing what they do best.

He cites the example of a CPS fertilizer dealer in Ken­tucky contracting with a local iron dealership, H&R Agri-Power. CPS is paying $2.00 to $2.50 per acre to H&R to make sure that they’re collecting good data from monitors in combines, planter tractors, sprayers — and making sure the data is coming in the way it should.

“The iron dealers really should understand the hardware and equipment, including how to keep things updated, and how data should go in and out of some of the monitors. That could be a very effective role for them.

“If I had any advice or hopes for the retailers it would be to really play to your strengths and find partners at the local level,” he says. He doesn’t see retailers trying to capture and eat the whole “pie” as a viable long-term strategy. (It’s big enough for everybody.) And Cubbage thinks growers will respect this kind of team approach and see “you’re not doing precision ag just to sell another pallet of seed.”