Right Place, Right Time: FieldAgent® Digital Scouting Means Efficiency
There is extensive planning that goes into growing and monitoring a crop each season. Whether you’re a grower, an agronomist or a retailer, you have an idea of what was planted, what is expected to emerge, what percentage might be lost and what a ballpark figure is that you’d like to see on the yield monitor come harvest. However, accurately tracking and analyzing crop performance and stress against these expectations has historically been limited due to the time and resources required to accurately scout a field on foot.
These limitations leave you unable to take corrective action at critical benchmarks throughout the season and subject your production improvement cycle to unnecessarily long delays. FieldAgent® Digital Scouting was built to augment traditional scouting by allowing you to continuously monitor fields, efficiently deploy scouting resources, quickly collaborate with stakeholders, support the most crucial economic decisions and validate treatment efficacy.
Zach Marston, principal scientist for Sentera, says there is often a narrow window of opportunity between when potential stressors are observed in a field and when corrective action needs to take place in order to protect yields.
“Many producers are making critical management decisions with limited quantities of data,” said Marston. “With FieldAgent Digital Scouting, we enable scouts to know which field to go to instead of basing these decisions on calendar dates or guessing, allowing them to streamline their time in the field so they can collect the information needed to inform better management decisions.”
When growers, agronomists and retailers are managing multiple fields, the value derived from FieldAgent Digital Scouting increases exponentially. This value begins with FieldAgent Notifications, an element of Digital Scouting, which monitors all your fields at once and lets you know when and where conditions might be calling for further assessment.
“Say, for example you’re an agronomist or advisor and one of your grower’s fields receives notifications of hail. The field might need to be replanted in a very narrow window of time, and it’s a good idea to go walk those fields with them,” said Marston. “Not only do Notifications and Digital Scouting help agronomists prepare for a planned visit, but they can also indicate the best time to plan a visit with that grower.”
FieldAgent Digital Scouting helps agronomic professionals streamline and simplify their in-season decision support workflow, helping them to manage for the best possible outcome.
“FieldAgent Digital Scouting changes our ability to plan and become proactive in our actions when traditionally we’re just addressing events based on a calendar day or taking things as they come throughout a season,” Marston said. “Sometimes a producer may take the time to drive all the way out to a field and then learn that everything is already good in that area. Meanwhile, a different area is in serious need of attention, but gets overlooked because there was not time to walk that field. Digital Scouting really eliminates some of that hassle and allows advisors to simplify decisions.”
“By streamlining the where and when to scout a field, FieldAgent helps agronomists cover more acres than they were previously able to without worrying about missing a critical event.”
Learn more about how FieldAgent Digital Scouting can work for you.