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Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr.

Benedict T. Palen, Jr, is a fifth generation farmer with substantial experience in many phases of agriculture and especially with regard to soil and water conservation techniques.<br>

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Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr.

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  1. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. Now that a farmer has the zone mapping and soil testing completed, what are the next considerations? This is where there is interplay of agronomic and financial decisions.  What should be in front of the farmer at this point is a map for each field with grids showing soils types.

  2. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. In the event that the farmer has yield maps from the most recent harvest, those maps should be placed over the soils map that was produced from the zone mapping. It should then be apparent how much correlation there is between more precisely defined soil types, and crop yields, in each area of the field that is delineated. These steps require careful thought as they will set the tone for the next critical paths in the program, and those include evaluating the likely returns and costs from adjusting seeding and fertilizer rates to match with the soil testing information.

  3. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. In the case of irrigated land, variations in water application rates across the field may come into play.   In addition, the yield map should give the farmer a sense of potential return from precision farming based on correlating areas of lower yields with less productive soils as revealed by the zone mapping and soil tests.

  4. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. In the event that there are no crop yield maps, then the farmer should consult with NRCS officials and others about the yield potential of each soil type shown on the new zone mapped soil survey, and then evaluate the potential costs and returns based on that information.  While not as precise as using historical actual yield maps as a benchmark, at least this is a pretty good starting point when such maps are lacking.

  5. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. On a field by field basis, the farmer should then assess the crop yield gap that has resulted from treating all areas of the field the same.  Further, he/she has to consider adjustments in input costs, upwards or downwards, depending on what the results of the zone mapping and soil sampling indicate. This may be a somewhat tedious process—depending on the complexity of the new field zones– but it is the most sensible way to get value from the money spent for the precision mapping and sampling.

  6. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. The end result of this process should be a field level financial analysis showing the capital costs, operating costs, and potential returns, from these first steps along the precision ag road.

  7. Steps To Precision Agriculture – Part 3 – By Benedict T. Palen, Jr. https://www.levo.com/benedict-t-palen-jr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLL-sU_O6vg https://www.f6s.com/benedictt.palenjr https://twitter.com/benedicttpalenj https://readymag.com/BenedictTPalenJr/1147391/

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