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.com2011 directory Find out about the markets every day at the close. The Western Producer Markets Moment service provides you with a daily e-mail of crop and livestock information, sent every afternoon after markets close. It’s easy to read. It pulls information together into one simple report. It will keep you in touch with the market and help you price and sell. It only takes a moment. It’s free. Sign up at: CONTENTS: THE FARM COMPUTER Precision agriculture tools help & TECHNOLOGY GUIDE is a supplement to producers make the most from The Western Producer Box 2500, their least............................................4 2310 Millar Avenue, Saskatoon, SK S7K 2C4 Canada Soil lab on wheels...............................7 Advertising Toll Free: 1-800-667-7776 Tool interprets soil salinity ...............10 Doubling soil sampling speed...........11 PUBLISHER ................................. Larry Hertz MARKETING MANAGER .............Jack Phipps ADVERTISING DIRECTOR ............Kelly Berg Flying above it all to get in CREATIVE DIRECTOR ........... Robert Magnell PAGE DESIGN & LAYOUT ...Shelley Wichmann down in the computer ..................... 12 INTERNET DIRECTORY................ 13 - 30 3 Precision agriculture tools help producers make the most from their least By RON LYSENG, Winnipeg Bureau ImagIne convertIng the poorest areas on the farm into the highest producing acres. Wade Mitchell doesn’t need to imagine it. He did it four years ago as a small-scale experiment on his 2,500 acre farm in east-central Iowa. Mitchell says his real time kinetics equipped scraper scooped eroded topsoil from field drains and spread it oto H uniformly on the tops of eroded knolls. LLp e Although he tried the technique on two different fields, H TC I m one with a pair of knolls showed the greatest improvement. Y a L Each knoll measured 3.6 acres and had traditionally c averaged only 16.5 bushels of soybeans per acre. The lowest Labeling each individual corn plant in the field may seem like preci- yield was 5.15 bu., with the highest being less than 20 bu. sion farming taken to the extreme, but in actual fact they only labeled 1,200 plants. Each plant was bar coded and tracked through the year They are designated as areas 4 and 5 on a coloured field map. for growth stage, photosynthesis, stalk diameter and yield. Overall average for the whole field was 26 bu., with the best areas hitting 34.5 bu. After moving eroded soil from the surface drains to the eroded knolls, the soybean yield for the knolls exceeded 35 their surface drains. bu. This soil came from the central drain, designated as area 6. “We started thinking about doing this experiment after The results were not surprising. The knolls were less than looking at some aerial photos of the farm taken in the 1930s two percent organic matter. Area 6 was 4.2 percent organic and the 1950s,” said Mitchell. matter. “Those old photos showed thin areas that matched the low Cation exchange capacity was under 10.6 for the knolls and yields we’ve been seeing on our combine’s yield monitor. We 23.1 for the good soil. wanted to see if there was something we could do about it.” Mitchell calculated how much good soil he needed to haul Mitchell pulled a number of soil samples, from eight to the knolls. The soil lower in the profile on the knolls was inches down to 16 inches, creating an accurate soil profile of poor quality, but he figured if he added six inches of good the two knolls. He also sampled the soil that had moved into topsoil, he might bring areas 4 and 5 up to the field average. 4 www.producer.com The Western Producer FARM COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY GUIDE 2011 oto H LLp e H TC I m e D a W Moving soil from the surface drains to eroded knolls turned 16 bushel soybean land into 35 bushel soybean land. “Think about it. It’s the very best topsoil that ends up in the Autosteer plAnter drains. It’s that way on any farm. Mitchell began intercropping in 2005. He alternates a 30- “Soil in the drains has so much organic matter and so much foot wide strip of corn with a 30-foot wide strip of soybeans water holding capacity. Moving it from the drains to the knolls that get planted a week later. totally changed the way those two spots behaved. The benefits were obvious. Nonintercropped corn on the “They went from the very lowest yielding parts of the Mitchell farm averaged 200 bu. In the fields where corn strips (field) to the very highest yielding parts of the field. It worked were interspersed with soybean strips, the corn averaged 225 far better than we would have ever guessed.” bu. Mitchell said he plans to use the technique on other spots. But the scheme demands extreme accuracy from the tractor While fixing 3.6 acres may not seem significant to farmers and planter. If planting isn’t perfect, running a 30-foot header in Western Canada, land prices in Iowa are about $6,000 per in the fall becomes a real nightmare. acre. Corn can yield 225 bu. Mitchell said many machines will drift in the field. per acre and soybeans 65 bu. “There’s no reason you To meet the need for better row accuracy, he installed Put it all together, and a few can’t have automated steering tires on the planter he uses for corn and beans. hours on the scraper tractor steering on your tractor, “A lot of potato growers use John Deere or the Trimble start to make good economic commodity cart and True Tracker GPS steering systems on their planters. Putting sense. steering on the planting machine gives you a tremendous “Plus, there’s another your drill or planter.” advantage, not just for row croppers, but also for broad acre consideration if you’re buying — Clay Mitchell crops seeded with an air drill. new land. Study the maps and “There’s no reason you can’t have automated steering on farmer aerial photos to see if there are your tractor, commodity cart and your drill or planter.” spots you can fix. It has a lot Mitchell also installed a steering coulter on his anhydrous to do with how much you should pay for land.” applicator. The coulter mounts on the hitch and steers Mitchell’s ancestors homesteaded the farm in 1871. He hydraulically. thinks the knolls could have been eroded before that, adding “This prevents it from wobbling. And it keeps the tanks on that soil erosion isn’t necessarily the man-made catastrophe the controlled traffic lane between the rows. many people make it out to be. It’s a natural occurrence on “Some tractor manufacturers have started offering steering the Great Plains. hitches that do the same thing. I think you need implement “The Plains used to burn off with those giant prairie fires. steering if you’re doing controlled traffic.” The surface had no protection. If there was a big rain or a big Mitchell began converting to controlled traffic in 2000 wind storm right after a fire, the soil would erode easily.” when he bought his first GPS autosteer system. Since Even with a combination of no till and strip till, Mitchell then, every implement on the farm has been outfitted with knows that a catastrophic amount of rain can haul a lot of his autosteer. The traffic patterns require two distinct lanes, best soil down the Mississippi River. covering about 17 percent of the arable land. No machinery is As a preventive measure, all the surface drains have a thick allowed off the lanes. grass base to catch the soil before it runs into the creeks and “We had one field that had been in total traffic control for rivers. Continued on page 6 The Western Producer FARM COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY GUIDE 2011 www.producer.com 5 Continued from page 5 Wade Mitchell’s family homesteaded in Iowa in 1871. He says many of the eroded knolls, upper left along the road, in this 1930’s aerial photo, had already been effected by prairie fires followed by wind or water erosion. 10 years. The soil in the lanes and what doesn’t.” was firm enough to support “We want data from One big lesson the Mitchells have learned is to check the our machines. individual rows. If you anhydrous knives at least once a year. “Then we got a new 24 come in with a big “We’ve had brand new anhydrous knives that have a 50 row planter that had four percent variation from one to the other. They’re new, right centre wheels. That’s the only combine that does 12 from the factory, and they’re plugged up.” configuration we could get. or 16 rows, all your He said it’s pointless to think about precision farming until Two wheels would have to run variations get thrown these details have been addressed. on the soil that hadn’t seen a together.” Another of those details is the accuracy of your GPS. tire for 10 years. Mitchell said that the north-south lines on the John Deere “When we took it to the — Wade Mitchell system converge to follow the curvature of the earth. field, the soil under those farmer “The John Deere lines hit the North Pole dead centre. two wheels was so fluffy, the “But the Trimble lines run straight. They don’t converge. wheels sank six inches. After They follow a cylindrical projection of the earth’s surface 10 years with no traffic, that soil was so loose.

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