In interviews with three crop consultants on what's ahead on the technology frontier, there was more talk about making better use of data already being captured than buying new technologies to gather more.

“Precision ag really increased in the Red River Valley beginning in 1994,” says Dennis Berglund, a consultant with Centrol in Twin Valley, MN, and immediate past president of the National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants (NAICC). “Now we're learning how to manage it. We are in a refinement phase. Our short-term goal is to use data more effectively and to give customers easier access to it.”

Not that there isn't a continuing interest in new technology.

Terry Neider, a crop production specialist for Cenex Harvest States in Moses Lake, WA, is in the second full year of working with a radio-based automated crop monitoring system. But as he promotes the program, he emphasizes the high-value information the system provides, not the technology.

“What we are trying to do is to give the grower access to information to make the appropriate decision without miring him in the technology,” Neider explains.

A third consultant, Mark Hinze, who operates Precision Management and Consulting in Juniata, NE, envisions a future where wearable voice-activated computers will allow crop scouts to dictate real-time reports without typing. But today he is prioritizing development of a relational database that will allow him to mine data to better advise his central Nebraska clients.

“We are focusing more on information management,” says Hinze, who left crop consulting for two years in the late 1990s to work with Big Green, and later Big Red, on precision agriculture technologies. “This is important because our customers have to produce at the lowest possible cost, so we have to make the best use of the data we collect.”

What follows is an overview of how each of these consultants sees technology fitting into the information equation and how they expect technology to affect the industry in the future.

The biggest technological change that Dennis Berglund sees in the near future for Centrol and its clients is the development of a Web-based communications package that is expected to be beta tested sometime in 2002.

“We're looking at making reports available on the Web, so we can be available to our clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he says. Recently, Centrol has been upgrading field reporting software from DOS to Windows, which, in turn, is being adapted to the Web.

He says the Web-based system will provide reports with built-in decision aids and other tools. “This will save us time and customers will receive more value,” he says.

Besides Web-based reporting, Centrol is continuing to use existing technologies to refine nitrogen management. That's taking two tacks.

Centrol is working with clients who are members of the sugar beet co-op, American Crystal Sugar, to improve sugar yields using infrared photos made available by the co-op. Research has shown that field areas where beet foliage is green at harvest has excess nitrogen, which reduces extractable sugar.

Berglund and other Centrol consultants are working with clients to map and digitize high-N areas to make variable-rate N applications for following crops. This saves fertilizer dollars the following year and draws down N in those areas before the next beet crop in two to three years, thus improving sugar yields. The value of this practice is largely unique to beets, since few other crops are as sensitive to excess N. Another factor that makes this approach practical is that N is less mobile in Berglund's northwestern Minnesota service area than in the heart of the Corn Belt, where the environment generally is wetter.

Centrol also is working with clients to measure elevation differences within fields using GPS and land-leveling lasers to better refine N applications. This often surprises people from outside Twin Valley Centrol's Red River Valley service area, since most fields in the heart of the valley are nearly table-top flat.

“Some people laugh when we bother measuring an elevation change of 2 1/2 feet across 80 acres, but we have found that even a one-foot difference can result in much different soil nitrogen levels at the end of the growing season,” he says. “In our area, even modest elevation changes can lead to subtle changes in moisture, fertility and productivity. We are still in the early stages of understanding this.”

After a year of field testing of a radio-based field monitoring system that is capable of monitoring customers' fields in a 60-mile radius, Terry Neider is convinced that the large investment the system required will benefit both customers and the co-op by providing simple, real-time soil moisture status and irrigation-scheduling decision aids.

“We proved that this system is versatile and economical compared to other options,” says Neider, who is heading up introduction and development of the system for Cenex Harvest States in Moses Lake, Quincy and the Tri-Cities area of east central Washington.

“We are providing higher-value information for about the same price as traditional irrigation scheduling programs,” he says. “This program ties us much closer to the customer, too.”

In addition to monitoring soil moisture and irrigation applications, the system also can monitor and assess conditions conducive to disease outbreaks, which tips off crop consultants to scout fields for a closer look.

The system, from Adcon Telemetry, uses a network of radio transmitters and receivers to relay a constant stream of data from sensors in client's fields to a computer server. Farmers and consultants can download the data via a modem into a PC. Software on the PC analyzes the data and produces an irrigation scheduling report.

“With access to real-time data, you know where you are versus water needs at any point in time,” says Neider. “There is no lag time like you have with neutron probe monitoring.

The cost to the grower for soil moisture and irrigation monitoring is about the same as a twice weekly neutron probe program.

In its second year, the number of growers using the program doubled to about 35 growers and 7,000 acres.

“A lot of new customers are only monitoring one or two fields to see how effective the program is before considering broader utilization”, says Neider.

Given this year's short water supplies in the Pacific Northwest, there will be a greater incentive not to over-irrigate.

“Some growers are saving money on water and pumping,” notes Neider. “The customer may get more yield or better-quality crops because the crop wasn't over- or under-irrigated.”

Since he began working as a crop consultant in the mid-1980s, Mark Hinze has relied heavily on computers to reduce the burden of reporting scouting results to his central Nebraska clients. His scouts' pickup trucks are offices on wheels. Working in teams, scouts use portable two-way radios to relay information to the truck. Reports are written on the spot, printed and delivered to the client immediately after a farm is scouted.

Now Hinze is investing to make those offices more productive. He's not adding more hardware. Instead, he is investing in building a relational database that is allowing him to provide more value to his customers.

“What's new for us is software,” he says. “The hardware is finally developing into something that can handle the software ideas we have.”

Hinze is convinced that by using a robust relational database being developed with an off-the-shelf database program that he will be able to identify new ways for his clients to become more efficient.

“We're taking the research from the Land Grant universities and applying it to the field using what we can learn from the database,” he says. “We can take general recommendations and tailor them to individual farmer needs. We can reduce costs — not just economic costs, but also costs to the environment.”

Hinze also is using WeedSoft, a software package developed by the University of Nebraska in cooperation with scientists at several other universities. “Using this program helps us to control weeds at the least cost to the grower and the environment.”

Despite his stronger emphasis on software-driven opportunities, Hinze continues to try new hardware-based technologies — and keeps an eye on future hardware developments that could boost scouting efficiency.

He uses a chlorophyll meter to help fine-tune nitrogen applications for his clients, who are primarily irrigators. The meter measures crop greenness, which reflects nitrogen sufficiency.

“We are concerned about nitrates in the groundwater, but we also want to supply an adequate amount of nitrogen to the crop,” he says. “The chlorophyll meter can determine a deficiency three to four weeks ahead of the naked eye, so additional N can be applied before yield is affected.”

For now, Hinze has held off using hand-held computers until they gain more computing power. But eventually, he expects hand-helds to allow his scouts to dictate reports using voice-recognition software. He also has begun investigating wireless delivery of reports directly to client's PCs or e-mail-enabled cell phones and hand-held computers.

“This would increase our efficiency if we could send the report right to the grower,” he says. “The customer could review the report in real time and ask us to scout a new area he felt might be a problem.”

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© 2007 Penton Media, Inc.