The Value of Harvest Data
Top producers, agronomists, and universities across the Midwest have continuously strived to improve grain yields while maintaining the quality and condition of their farmland. One of the greatest challenges for most of the 20th century was site-specifically identifying in-field variability. However, the last 25 years has been marked with many great advances in technology allowing producers to manage their farms like never before. The “systems” approach has been widely adopted as a management strategy for the production of crops grown throughout the corn belt. In this style of management, high economic yields are built by managing factors that influence grain yield in a positive and sustainable fashion. Today’s current technology has made identifying yield influencing factors easier by automatically recording and representing data geospatially.
Accurate yield data is, in many ways, the corner stone of site-specific management within the “systems” approach. Having the ability to represent spatial and temporal data accurately is critical to identifying limiting factors within a cropping system. Harvest data is used by growers and research teams to analyze crop inputs by conducting strip trials, randomized blocks, or management zones. Soil scientist and agronomist use harvest data to account for grain removal when generating fertility recommendations.
Yield information collected with today’s modern harvesting equipment provides important information far beyond a simple moisture reading and a bushel per acre average. Combine harvesters equipped with GPS technology can map all the input parameters used to calculate yield by associating a GPS location to each of the recorded samples taken from the yield monitoring system. The mapped input parameters almost always include crop flow, crop moisture, elevation, header width, speed and calculated wet/dry bushels. To build an accurate data set from these inputs requires that the yield monitoring system be kept in top shape and precisely calibrated. If the instruments used to collect the input parameters are left in poor condition and are out of calibration the collected harvest data is of little to no value.
Collecting accurate harvest data allows grain producers and their agronomist to accurately evaluate their management strategy within a current cropping system and determine whether they are improving upon their yield goals. Growers adjust their inputs and crop management strategy by continuously assessing the factors that limit their yield potential. Harvest data and yield maps provide a baseline for this evaluation. Collecting harvest data and building yield maps is a long-term investment and grows in value with each year of new data acquired.
Article written by:
Calvin. D Knotts, CCA
Precision Farming Specialist
Redline Equipment