RELATED: Capturing the data edge
THE latest farming frontier, real-time diagnostics, is fast emerging as agricultural service providers adapt big data for prescriptive farm management.
Among the relative newcomers to digital ag is Canadian tech provider and start-up company FarmersEdge, which, in late 2015, signed agronomy and farm inputs business Delta Ag as its sole Australian service provider for its prescription farming services.
This will bring real-time and predictive decision capabilities to NSW farms, said Delta Ag director of operations, John Pattinson. Delta Ag partnered with FarmersEdge because its digital platforms were built around similar broadacre production systems to those in NSW.
The new system, called Smart Solutions, has been used on “Myee”, Grenfell.
“Myee”, about 2104 hectares (including 300ha leased), is owned by David and Rebecca Hurst, from Bray via Robe, South Australia. Their farm manager, Paul Tognetti, said “Myee’s” enterprises consisted of canola, wheat and lamb breeding.
He deals with the Delta Ag-owned Lachlan Fertilisers, Grenfell, and for many years has worked with its senior agronomist, James Ingrey.
“As things have progressed and we have moved more into technology, we’ve headed down the path of precision ag and Delta are now offering precision ag consulting,” he said.
“We’ve had all these yield maps for a number of years and can see huge variations across our cropping paddocks and it’s got to the point now where (technology has) the ability to zone these variables.”
He said some of the variables were showing up every year, so now they would individually soil test each zone to allow them to be more precise with inputs.
“The main reason I’m so interested in it is I can see that we’re spending ‘X’ amount per hectare to grow wheat or canola, but we’re not getting the same return across every hectare,” Mr Tognetti said.
With FarmersEdge, Delta Ag’s base package uses Farm Command, a data storage and manipulation interface, which works in conjunction with the portable automated data collection device, Canplug, which integrates real-time and batched equipment data.
There’s going to be so much data coming from imagery that it’s just going to drive the cost down, so the ability to be able to look at your field on a daily basis is going to become the norm.
- Wade Barnes, FarmersEdge, Canada
“It’s a (diagnostic) bit of gear that plugs into the cab of whatever you happen to be driving,” Mr Pattinson said.
“It’s been a missing piece of the puzzle because we’ve still been relying on the tractor driver to remember what he did in that paddock and write in his notebook.”
Smart Solutions uses five metre resolution satellite imagery and is charged on a per hectare fee.
Mr Pattinson said the base package cost of less than $5 a hectare. This technology, when combined with the “boots on the ground” package already in play in Canada and Brazil (where FarmersEdge was already established), was providing a return on investment of about 3:1, he added.
FarmersEdge chief executive officer Wade Barnes, Winnipeg, Canada, said variable rate application was just one aspect, which would also allow better risk management such as planting to avoid frost or better forward marketing, as well as the ability for real-time response.
“A lot of it is being able to understand what’s happening in a field and being able to react to it,” Mr Barnes said.
“Variable crop input will just be the norm. You’re going to match your crop inputs to the activity of the field.”
He said the technology would allow a real-time inventory of farm inputs, so retailers could also more accurately determine demand.
“Farmers are going to know ahead of time and their key retailers will be able to better target what they’re going to need. That whole industry will be more on a real time inventory,” Mr Barnes said.
This would create savings through efficiency along the chain.
Delta Ag senior agronomist, James Ingrey, Grenfell, said this technology linked all the precision segments, including the machinery, grower, consultant and data and allowed consultants to overlay layers of information, such as soil test data, satellite imagery, EM38 data – “any sort of information about that paddock”.
“We can then monitor that information on a very accurate basis. It allows us to put together a package for the grower where we can efficiently use all the technology of precision agriculture.”
Canplug fits any post 2003 ISO data port and if a grower lacked 3G access, they could use its 16 gigabytes worth of data storage.
Mr Barnes said quality and cost of data was also expected to improve as new, smaller “lunchbox” satellites came online.
“There’s going to be so much data coming from imagery that it’s just going to drive the cost down, so the ability to be able to look at your field on a daily basis is going to become the norm.”
Mr Pattinson said FarmersEdge, meanwhile, was using Rapid Eye technology - a German geospatial provider - which delivered five metre resolution imagery (Lansat 30 produces 30m resolution).
“It’ll be interesting to see what’s more effective – will the drones rule or will the lunchbox satellites rule, I think that’s yet to be determined.”