Video Transcript
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right away so Karla I’ll let you start presenting and introduce yourself
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hello good morning everyone and thanks again for joining let me just get my
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screen scott or mike can you see that
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all right oh yeah
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coming now yeah you’re good okay great
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again thanks everyone for joining I’m Karla Jackson I’m the market development
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agronomist for Veritas I am also in the southwestern Ontario area where it’s
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currently raining so so thanks they delete some of the spring rush here
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today we will be talking about soil sampling resolutions the insights from
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soil sampling to understand your field variability the first couple slides
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might be review for some of you that took part last week but the bulk of today’s webinar will be going more
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in-depth and show you what you can do with your soil sampling data when you’re
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considering a precision egg whether it’s to get started or to make adjustments there are a few questions to look at
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mainly around what your decision-making process is when when it comes to
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answering these questions such as what your equipment needs are what input rates should you be going with what are
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the environmental issues do you follow your gut or do you follow the trends
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online or are you just following what’s being said at the coffee shop or are you
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using the data to identify the problem are you having on-farm trials to figure
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out your input rate or what should you be applying or what seeding rate you should be going with and are you
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measuring those results you can use your own arm farm data to
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answer all five of these questions as you get deeper into the precision egg do
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I need different equipment or to already have what I need do I have the yield monitor do you have the planter is there
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grants out there that you could apply to to help conduct these on-farm trials to
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get that data you need to figure out the right rates using traditional practices
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and straight great applications which you can see here by the gray line of a
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straight application to get an average yield of 200 bushels and the blue line
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which is your variable yield you are only farming the fields average where
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the lines meet and this has limited potential we can hand data to then look
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at the outlying areas of your fields where we can apply variable rate we can
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look at the higher yielding areas to look at if you’re under applying your your fertilizer and limiting your yield
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and we can also look at the lower yielding areas where you may be over applying and you’re just you’re just
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wasting money and you could also be having a negative environmental impact
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when using the proper application of data insights and technology to to
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adjust your inputs and to achieve that higher yielding area we can reduce the
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inputs and the lower yielding areas you will then start to see how your your input lines and your yield will start to
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line up because you’re putting the fertilizer where it is needed this is following your agronomist
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recommendations as well as a flock of following the four-hour nutrient stewardship you’re putting the nutrient
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where it’s needed and your you are for our compliant
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some already collecting yield data so when you use your yield map you can see
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that the average yield for this field is 200 bushels so similar to what you saw
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in this previous graph the average yield for this field is 200 bushels and if
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you’re straight rate applying fertilizer you’re applying the same amount throughout this whole field but you can
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easily see that the yields reached up to almost 385 bushels an acre in some areas
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but it also went down to 16 bushels an acre so you’re applying the same amount
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across these areas which they don’t need it those are those outlying areas you
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want to target to start making the adjustments yield data is great to start
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collecting to see the areas that needed for improvement but it needs to be combined with soul sampling to start
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making that data-driven decisions and to fully understand your field variability
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you can take that yield map and choose the most representative of diff fields
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as you can see here in the middle these are multiple years of yield data and we chose the yield at the top that was most
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representative to what the field looked like as you can see by the bare ground image on the left we then created the
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the zones based off of the yield the bare ground and also some elevation maps
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we created the full sampling zones those
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were then tested to capture that fields variability using as many data layers as
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possible to create the right zones and using the proven analysis is important to take your soil sampling resolution to
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the next level now when you’re getting into soil sampling or you’ve done it for
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a few years you start to wonder what resolution should I be sampling at and
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the next couple slides will be going through the different methods and levels
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available on the left is the yield data for field and you can see the polygons
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that were drawn to that yield and on right is a CC layer from soul optics
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which is very detailed look at the soul resolution from a sensor driven across
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the field no zones are created this is the actual data from the sensors then you look at
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the 25-acre grid which is essentially box sampling that many are still doing
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today as shown in the poll today that you can see that you doing the ball or
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the 25-acre grid and you compare it to the yield you’re not really capturing that yield variability that you can see
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on the left similar to the 10-acre grid and going down to the 5 acre grid you
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still aren’t really capturing that variability in that field as on the left a two and a half acre grid is one of the
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the most common sampling resolutions across industry today and again compared
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to the yield it captures a little bit but it’s not accurately capturing what
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you’re seeing in your actual yield year-over-year you can even go down to
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the one acre grid which is quite expensive and is probably the closest to
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the field variability in the grid method alternatively if you want to get into
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zones or polygons you can start at a 10-acre zone or polygon it does classify
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the high in the lower grounds but again it’s not really showing you that
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variability in the yields you can get to the five-acre polygon as well as the two
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and a half acre where many are switching to after sampling for a few years and it’s the two and a half acre polygons
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where you are start are starting to really see that variation in that yield
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you’re separating out those smaller bands on lower yield and you’re starting to capture those higher yielding areas
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over here you can even get down to the one acre
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zone or polygon which is probably the most accurate and the polygon method but
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again that is also very expensive you can see these similarities between the
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sensor based sampling between the one acre and the polygon that they are quite
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similar in terms of the variation across the field depending on your fields each
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sampling resolution will differ you may have a field that is fairly flat and you
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can do a 10 make your polygon but you also may have a feel similar to this where there’s lots of Knolls a lot of
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variation and you have to go to the two and a half acre level now this example
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here it is from soil optics but I just want to make a note that there are other tools out there that are sensor based
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they’re similar but they have different results now choosing the best resolution
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for your farm is important to be able to apply the fertilizer better you want to
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work with your agronomist or your local retail to discuss what level is appropriate for you but also being
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mindful choosing the most economical method for your operation that is very important for some depending on their
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end goal the five acre the two and half acre polygon has the best economical
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value for what you’re trying to do if it’s looking to just increase your yield
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or you’re looking to find areas to reduce some your input cost the five acre the two-and-a-half is the most
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common when choosing your resolution it
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is important to understand the difference in the method and what you are getting for instance zone sampling
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is one of the more common entry level sampling techniques where there’s good
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equipment and processes being used to create the zones in each of these zones are sampled individually
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but then they are all mixed so all the zone ones are then mixed together in a
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one sample bag all the zone twos are sampled into one bag all the zone threes
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etc each zone of either the high ground or the low ground they’re all sampled
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individually but then ultimately mixed into one bag this helps save some money but in the end this ends up averaging
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out your soul your soul results this is still a good place to start for those
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that are not currently soil sampling as this really starts to show your your
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field variability now another option
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very similar to zone but a little more detailed and more in-depth is the
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polygon sampling so you can see here that these zones similar to the zone
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sampling that the they’re created to the field variation the zones are then
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sampled individually and they are put in individual bags sent to the lab to
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measure that variability as accurately as possible and then on the right the
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last one the soil optics this one has a similar amount of soil classifications
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as you can see to the zone zone sampling has about five different soil classifications and soil objects has
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about seven but if you look at the zoomed in area in the green box each dot
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is this in theory is a soil sampling bag that is the data collected by the sensor
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so why this sensor technology is so cool
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the level information is crazy and it brings a lot of value to the farm but it
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is also really hard to manage it is impossible to manage the farm at this
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current stay of the technology that we have to manage each of these individual
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dots at the farm level now this next part is going to be newer
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for those that were online and this is where we start to go a little more in depth about what we can do with your
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soil sample the insights that can be provided to soil sampling results the
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soil analytics tool is available to provide the so what’s a soil sampling
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many growers do not sample due to the variety of reasons but the most popular
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reason is that maybe the SOL results don’t help answer what they need to do
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on the farm where the soil analytics tool can make your sampling data more actionable you can take your soil test
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data and map out what the nutrient levels are in each polygon this is essentially a map book so you can see
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these soil sampling zones and then each one was sampled separately and then we
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are able to see what the nutrient levels are in each area this is the potassium
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level you can see how it varies throughout and you can then pair it with your yield to see where that is
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impacting your yield this is essentially a map book and many of you may already
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receive this from the soil lab or your agronomist but regardless of who you work with a map book and a brief
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explanation of what the Maps mean should be provided to you it is important to
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note that when you’re doing any analysis on your soil sampling you should compare
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it to the similar year’s yield for example this field if it was sampled in
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the fall you need to use that Falls yield to then do your analysis on or if
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you plan just to sample now let’s say you need to use last Falls or in some
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people’s cases this winter’s yield you’ll have to do the analysis on the
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most recent yield to when you’re sampling now once the field has been sampled a
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deeper analysis by zone compared to the optimum yield can be done
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mic if you’d be able to speak to this but the potassium level on this farm sir
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Carla I’m little later on we’ll take this field right through to entirety and
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show a little bit more on how we can get the value out of it but out of the gate
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here’s some things we’ll want to show for the next set of graphs they’re gonna pop up are how this field compares on
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fertility versus overall yield so if we look up in this top corner here where
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the yield map is Carla put your mouse than that that really high yielding area in that section there when we look at
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the soil test K level you can see it is one of our lowest soil test levels and
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is actually below 100 in this field and is at a critical soil test value
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something we need to watch and something we need to build let me look at the lower yielding area right directly next
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to it you can see it has one of the highest potassium levels there so some
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interesting things to look at as we as we look at a historical practice of fertilizing those areas that are always
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high yielding I always remove the most fertility and with a straight application we’ve mined the soil and we
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may be leaving some bushels on the table so those are the areas we need to look for out of the gate to improve our
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yields and spend a little bit of money to get that higher return on the flipside those really low yielding areas
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have always been low yielding and we’ve built fertility up so right there we can save some money we can keep it in our
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pocket or we can push that expenditure over to those other areas and hopefully
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at the end of the day spend the same amount of money on inputs just do a lot better job farming the firm a really
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neat thing I want to show and we’ll create some clarity later on in the graphs with this field is the difference
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between that low bought a spec Dasom zone and that high yield environment and the zone second from the back where we
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have some high potassium levels and yield is still high the interesting
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thing there that zone used to be wet three or four years ago we put a tile through and fix
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the water issue and now it begins to yield so we have two high yielding zones
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in this field with completely different fertility underneath of them due to management change and due to some you
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know historical practices the interesting part about this is now when
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I begin to push seed or nitrogen scripts on this firm my Rex you know typically
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we like to increase corn seeding rate and increase nitrogen rates out of the gate where yields high so when I do this
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on this farm that zone at the back really performs fertility is high I get the response my script works but that’s
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owned up near the in the middle when I do that I tend to get lodging you know
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there’s not enough P and K in that zone to support a 300 plus bushel corn crop and create some frustration so you know
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just going to a seed and nitrogen fertility script without understanding your soil and I would understand not
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knowing what fertility levels are underneath of it can often change the outcome of those other scripts and we’re not getting the full value potential
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that’s there so really interesting data you can look at and without looking at
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this tool and using these types of graphs and charts sometimes this information gets mr. or or or we lose
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concept of it and I’ll get into that a little bit on the next slide yeah as
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Mike pointed out at the variation potassium and impact on the yield you
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can look at this soil test result and you look at the potassium numbers you would not have been able to understand
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that level of nutrients impact in those different zones in the fields and this
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is why many people have questions about what these numbers mean and you look at
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that it’s like great okay what’s my optimum level what should I be targeting what is the actual nutrient that’s
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limiting on my field and which one should I be focusing on to get the the
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best or the greatest ROI that I can get for that
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without the soil analytics you won’t be able to see that variation just from the soil test the soil analytics does a
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statistical analysis on your soul results and it can help answer what your optimal nutrient level should be right
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so when we look at the field and we overlay yield on top of each individual
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soil sample layer we begin to be able to graph the results on charts that look
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like this so not only do we get to see where yield is highest on the axis on
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the left but we also see the soil test level across the axis on the bottom so
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initially looking at that we can begin there see you in the relation to that
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graph car let’s look at the beginning the opportunities where we can begin to cut back on fertility where we’re above
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that optimum level and we can also show the areas in the field where we need to build soil to get you some more yield
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potential then we look at this graph we can see that the bicarb phosphorus optimum level should be about 28 R per
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million on this field so moving forward look for that optimum yield potential 28
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the number I want to focus on on this firm and it’s the number I want to shoot to be my optimum and and I’m gonna do
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that because that’s what my dad is telling me from my own field with my own yield monitor and in a accurate
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resolution from soil sample when we move on to the potassium map you can see it’s
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not quite as nice of a curve but that’s because of that situation I was talking about on that last graph so when we look
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at the far left side that high tail is that really low producing area where
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that soil test level was around a hundred slightly over or slightly under
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right that is still the highest testing area in the field but for how long if I
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keep going the way that firms been firm in the past it might there to be at a critical level and start to throb you
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know it might be more open the disease things like that lodging for sure I want
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to focus myself more around those zones at the back that hundred and sixty-five two hundred
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seventy part per million is the right part per million for that farm I need to build everything to the left up to that
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level and I need this and I can begin to cut back and save everything on the right so we can really start to see that
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if I can get that farm into that one seventy one area that we’re gonna start to see some decent yield increases the
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performance of my other prescriptions if I choose to do that on the farm will start to pay and everything starts to
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build up holistically and we start to really get decent results from the precision AG program when we look at the
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magnesium on this firm for those of you that did look at that soil test sheet quickly you could see pH was a major
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issue calcium was low magnesium was low you know for on and some other things
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were low with it so the field needs a lot of work and this graph exactly shows
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that we need to increase magnesium on this farm to get a good result the first
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place we’re gonna start obviously is with some dalam a tag line to get the calcium and magnesium in pH olive Jack
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and then we’ll begin to look at you know some K mega applications and some things like that to help top off areas that
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don’t get that lime application and then don’t need that correction from pH okay
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thanks Mike and to go along with those curves so on the next we’ll also provide
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these maps which show each nutrient and where it’s lemonade if it’s too high too
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low this was a quick and easy way to see what the field needs as Mike mentioned
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the the magnesium it was limiting and this part of the field and also the pH
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so yes we’re gonna make a lime application and then also boron which is
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a micronutrient that has never has never really been sampled for on this farm and
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it came back that it was limiting and over half of the fields and a couple
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slides I’m going to just show you kind of like the ROI a case study on on the
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impact boron had on the two years ago these results ultimately
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can help answer the question of what nutrient do I fixed first the soil
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analytics tool helped focus on the most limiting nutrients which then can be turned into variable rate fertilizer
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scripts so you can see that we made a potassium script and we increase
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potassium in this higher yielding area to bring up that potassium and we also reduced the amount of potassium in this
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back part of the field because that was already high in potassium levels and
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already yielding high so we’re trying to build up these high other higher yielding areas in this area since it’s
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historically always kind of a lower yielding area we’re not going to put as much there just because it’s not gonna
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see the benefit from that and then also matching up with that magnesium map we
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only applied a km egg blend in this part of the field as you can see from the
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rest of the bare ground imagery there was nothing applied to this area so we’re focusing a lot of our application
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in this area using the variable rate scripts we are targeting the outliers of
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the fields and changing the input amounts where they’re needed the data
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insights from your soil sampling results help target your fertilizer inputs to where it will be most utilized as
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mentioned just a minute ago the sole results showed that boron was lower on
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over half of the field so I think seven of the of the 18 or fourteen whatever
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zones or was in this field over half of it was limiting so then decided to then
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create a on off boron prescription so you can see here yellow was on and green
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is the off checkbox the checkbox which were strategically placed in the lower
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yielding area of the field as well as the higher yielding area and the in the medium yielding area
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check box are done so we can do the analysis at the end of the of the year to see what its impact was on the yield
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account in a quarter of boron was then applied pre plant and that the end of
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the year we did the analysis and it showed that boron had an average increase of 13.7 bushels an acre the low
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yielding areas here had about a twenty three bushels an acre increase and the higher yielding areas had about almost
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six bushels an acre increase ultimately having an ROI of almost 200 and a net
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profit of forty-one dollars just by putting on boron on this field just to
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just wanted to know it’s important that these scripts and analysis can be used in any application as long as their
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capability of training the product on and off whether its nitrogen seed fungicide or any other nutrient it can’t
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be done if it’s a blend is required for instance that we couldn’t do this
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analysis if we just threw the boron in with the nitrogen so we separated it
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with those applications boron was applied nitrogen followed and then it was work incorporated and then planted
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the following day this trial is going to be repeated I think this year to see and
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after a couple of years of trial to see if we’re on continue to how this in this great impact on yield eventually bore
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I’ll just be thrown in with the nitrogen from now on knowing that it does pay and
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it does have an impact and we won’t have to do this analysis anymore this was one
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of Mike’s fields in the blenheim area so Mike if you wanted to add anything else based on your experience from this trial
28:16
yeah thanks Carla it was an interesting trial for us we
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use this field as a test field quite often never ever measured for boron
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before and so testing yeah we just kind of did the basic was thinking manganese approach as many do across the province
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here in North America for that matter but was challenged you know with these new soil
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insights tools we have to maybe look a little deeper and see if there’s anything else negatively affecting yield oh and behold boron did come up as one
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of the limiting factors so we decided to do a test what I really like about this test is it really uses all the tools
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available in the marketplace right so we’ve used the yield monitor on the combine and I’m like that that’s the
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only tool that my farm operation has is the yield monitor we rely very heavily on a regular tailor to do the barrel
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rate fertilizer applications in this case the variable rate spraying and we use the analytics we can get provided to
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us from Veritas to D to do the rest with that being said obviously a planter
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would be a nice upgrade for this field but not something in the pocketbook right now but with that we were able to
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draw some decent zones follow through with some soil sampling then run the
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soil analytics tool on it to see the insights we got from that we were then able to find a potential hidden hunger
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we then put the prescription analysis tool in place the script analysis to run
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an ROI evaluation and then come to the end conclusion of does that product make me money or not it’s a really cool
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thoughts from the field I mean that if you look at those field averages down there 150 bushel that is the worst corn
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yield we’ve had in the operation in the last ten years that year was kind of a mention had some replanting and had some
30:12
extreme drought on it it was the worst corn field we had that season and the
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thought from my father in the combine was the boron really affected yield you
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know I think we killed the crop a little bit it had a negative impact and that probably would have been the decision we
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would have left the field with had we not done a deeper analysis and had the
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tools in place to do something like this we I was pleasantly surprised to see the positive result from that application
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and as – Carla mentioned we’re going to try it again this year and we’re gonna spread it out on a couple other firms to
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see what we have again this is a boron example but the
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point of the slide is not to tell you all to go home and spray boron the point of the slide is to show how the Tool
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Works together all the tools work together to provide those deeper insights and stronger solutions to your
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operation this could be any product every trip we have across the field today with a variable rate controller in
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our cab as the potential to be a test trip or a learning experience for the
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agronomist and for the customer using tools like this really allow us to dive into the data and find out what the real
31:25
solution was you can see that those blocks were placed very strategically so
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that we can learn from the high yielding and the low yielding areas in the field to really honor the and pull out some
31:37
good results and be smarter so whether it’s a new foliar product whether it’s a
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new product that just being you know wasn’t presented in the marketplace use
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this type of data and this type of solution to come to the real results and determine whether it’s right for you and
31:57
whether it does bring value to the operation that’s kind of the whole key behind this approach and you know
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whether soil sampling in general fertility or or any product that that you want to try this is the type of
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process that can be implemented today to help unearth that value and help me make
32:16
smarter decisions yeah that’s a good
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point mentioning to that yeah only the yield monitor is being used in that you
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work closely with your retail to be able to apply these these different tools I’m
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sowing in conclusion every field has variability and one thing I want to
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leave you guys with today is how are you managing yours today’s technology
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creates the opportunity to teach us something and every pass we can become better and using the technology to learn
32:51
faster feel specific data paired with strong analytics whether it’s off your
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soil sampling or even just doing the analytics off of a nutrient application this provides the Sowa answers and the
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proof to help drive on farm business decisions technology is here is here and
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your next piece of equipment you buy will definitely have technology in it by
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implementing these simple tools that we review today you can start collecting data and will help to take advantage of
33:27
that new technology in year one rather than three years down the line so you can if you buy a planner next year you
33:35
really have that base data that you can start making those decisions on in utilizing that technology right away
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start collecting the data today and you will that you will need the firm was tomorrow thank you and I guess we’ll
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open it up to any questions
33:56
yeah cola mic excuse me Carla mic thank you for taking us through that I’m gonna
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open up for the question in the answer session in just a second I see somebody has already typed the question in the
34:07
chat feature and if you could I’m gonna open up a question and answer bubble for you in just a second if you could type
34:13
your question in the question and answer section that way we can we can clearly
34:19
see that and make sure we address it as Carla Mike booth said we believe all your fields are different and they all
34:26
need to be managed individually ever-ever grower knows their fields and understands that and we that’s our value
34:33
or that’s our understanding as we go out and and interact with our clients as we
34:38
went through this today we’ve demonstrated on a couple fields that each of your fields do have variability and we’ve broken those fields down and
34:45
showed how that variability looks and then we talked about several ways to capture it through zone grid bulk
34:53
different soil sampling techniques and then finally Mike went into a bit of understanding how to get a positive ROI
35:00
by capturing this variability and farming to this variability so so with
35:06
that I’m gonna close though formal webinar portion and will now start to move into the question and answer
35:13
session so I’m gonna open up a question/answer bubble and you guys should all be able to see that now where
35:20
you can go in and start entering your questions I’ll pause for just a minute or two while people can get their
35:26
questions typed in there and like while
35:40
were while we’re waiting if you could go and address this slide Mike there were
35:48
some people that said they were unable to see so if you could just address a
35:53
little bit what are the data layers they used to get to this complete solution
36:00
here and and what was kind of the positive ROI here’s God so we first
36:08
started with multiple years of yield data elevation and some fair ground
36:14
imagery to create the zones that were specifically targeted to each production area of the field those zones were the
36:22
thin soil sample with the polygon approach to get an accurate resolution
36:31
of what’s going on on those in each of those zones we then ran the soil
36:36
insights tool to begin to understand how the nutrients were affecting yield on
36:41
the farm and and ultimately how how they were impacting yield and that that’s
36:49
where that the curves came from that we showed a couple slides previous to that which begin to show us what the most
36:55
limiting nutrient is in each zone and what the optimum soil test level should be across the farm and then from there
37:03
we went into the barrel break fertilizer
37:08
applications and determining what the what products are needed and where and
37:15
because boron was identified as one of the nutrients and something we had typically been applying in the past we
37:22
then implemented descriptive process script analysis tool to show the
37:27
positive ROI from or on application I’m so quite a bit of
37:32
intensity going on on this field using all the tools but you know this is something we’ve been doing on our farm
37:38
for the last 15 years so it’s it’s not new to us you know out of the gate with
37:44
a customer I would say you know as a starting point just build some decent
37:50
zones they stopped some yield and do some soil sampling anything out of the gate see what the variability looks like
37:56
and where the opportunities lie and you know begin to make some changes from there I see Tom Carlton I believe asked
38:04
the question about lime on this farm being the probably most critical and then the first place to start and I
38:11
can’t agree with that question more definitely the pH and the lion issue on
38:16
this farm is critical it’s something we’ve been working on for the past couple years these results definitely
38:22
show that it is one of the most limiting factors along with the boron so a lion
38:27
application was made and it will continue to be made and until we can
38:32
amend that problem and it gets if they get it fixed obviously correcting pH first will make
38:38
the other nutrients more available and have some greater success as we go but
38:44
now with these tools we have a way to measure how these applications are
38:49
affecting the overall fertility how it’s adjusting and then changing yield as we
38:54
move forward and showing are we on the right track and how are we getting a return from the products that we are spreading yeah thanks Mike
39:04
so you we’ve got three questions so far and please please keep your questions the one you have answered the first
39:10
question about addressing Lyme I’d say the next question goes right back to your more on the question is since some
39:19
people believe that the boron test is unreliable how do we determine our own
39:25
levels and can they be influenced by the different environment or soil moisture
39:31
availability sure I mean absolutely that’s that’s a great question and you
39:37
know that I guess that all depends on on the lab and then testing practices and what the
39:44
reliability is of that test I think that just adds more grounds for doing
39:52
research like this on the fire I mean whether or not the test is accurate or not getting a 13 bushel increase from
40:01
out in the quarter application of boron the me tells me that boron is deficient and I need to apply it to my field if
40:08
the result was the other way then sure absolutely if it’s not paying then then don’t do it I think as we the cases with
40:17
a lot for soil sampling practices we if we get really critical and look at the actual number on the test itself sure
40:24
there’s some variability and there’s some inaccuracy when we start looking at the trends and the general conclusions
40:30
we can make then I think we can all do a better job and be smarter I can’t get
40:36
into an argument and I don’t have the knowledge to save what the optimum boron soil test level is past but I can say
40:45
that when you get below one part per million you start to see your response of some sort and when you get down to
40:53
the point one or point two like you showed in this field you’re definitely gonna see a response you’re getting to a
40:59
very very low level so it all depends on your soil type the parents or the soil
41:05
material to have and what nutrients you’re gonna get a response from or not and you know if the soil test is telling
41:12
you something then do a trial it would test like this confirm to yourself prove
41:20
to yourself that it is the right direction to go in and I am getting a response and there’s money to be made by
41:25
doing it if there’s not then don’t bother I mean the point of this is that make our operations more money and if
41:33
for the egg retailers are a drought I’m a summit on the call to help our customers make more money and and and
41:39
that’s the name of the game in this is being more efficient in being more profitable
41:44
thanks Mike great wait a great way to tie together how measuring your yield and actually
41:54
what it does for you monetarily is more in line with what the numbers might
41:59
say it’s is it proven a positive ROI for you either by increased value or decreased cost next question is and I’ll
42:08
let you figure out how how to address this how do we incorporate soil health measurements into a methodology like
42:15
this what some feedback on that that’s a great question
42:20
yeah health topics is becoming more and more popular and as it should be I firmly believe this oral health piece
42:27
is something that we can all do a better job on most of the research and data
42:34
I’ve read around soil health all kind of stems back to that fertility question as well I mean and it makes sense when you
42:44
know those really healthy soils on our firm are typically producing our highest
42:50
yields and our best our best and best conditions for growth so you know I
42:56
think there’s there’s a lot of ways we can we can look at soil health and we can look at look at ways to improve that
43:03
soil testing is just one answer in that obviously it gives us total nutrients
43:09
available I think the soil health topic really
43:15
starts to dive into some of those other questions that aren’t answered by the soil cast how do we start managing like
43:22
the microbes better do things like cover crops or green manures or things like that start to help build those organic
43:28
matters and it levels up and start tracking some of those moisture issues
43:33
and things like that we have on those tougher areas of the field so you know this approach maybe isn’t the Silver
43:41
Bullet for a soil health but at the same time I think we’ll see some very very strong trends the work we’ve been doing
43:47
with our partners ana labs around their soil health test there’s full of the pelas test has initially shown some
43:53
really positive correlations between fertility levels and soil health we also
43:58
see a very strong correlation between ncbi imagery and and yield obviously for
44:06
those in the room they’ve seen that that correlation is strong and you know I would say there’s greater than 90%
44:13
correlation between those red areas you see on the screen in front of you now will also be the red areas on your NDVI
44:20
image with four drop health throughout the growing season and they will also be the areas with the lowest soil health
44:28
rating on a soil health test and vice versa obviously for the green act so starting to tie all this back
44:34
together soil health is extremely important that directly ties in to our
44:40
fertility levels which ultimately directly ties into our plant growth plant health and overall yield and
44:47
profitability at the end of the year so worked being done on that front to start
44:53
answering the question a little more depth but definitely the same zones will apply and ultimately at the end of the
45:01
day it’s gonna be how do we begin to manage those zones differently across the field to better improve thanks Mike
45:13
we had about 10 minutes and we’re gonna keep answering questions until we’re about out of time so we have three
45:20
standing questions right now and we’ll push through these the next one gets down into recommendations of do we have
45:27
a recommendation for apply in gypsum and I don’t know Michael wants you or Carla go with this we’re not trying to
45:34
necessarily give specific rates but generally this concept of measuring what
45:40
we’re doing to get a positive ROI so you want to dress that Mike sure yes we can
45:48
and have in the past made recommendations for gypsum you know it definitely is a decent product out there
45:56
especially on those soils where gauge is you know not as big of a problem or is
46:03
high enough and then calcium’s the yes you were looking for you know it uses a
46:08
little bit more the a saturation approach and percent calcium levels on the farm trying to get more of an
46:15
optimum so know that’s something that could be explored later or reach out
46:20
through some of that but obviously lime is the cheapest and
46:25
best source for amending calcium out of the gate I would say gypsum becomes a very close second when pH is not the
46:33
issue we’re trying to fix all depends on source and availability there’s some
46:38
areas of the world where gypsum is very hard to get your hands on and very hard to come across so yes definitely ways to
46:48
thanks we’ve got two more questions so far and both of these are dealing with
46:54
boron but they they also directly apply into the methodology so for the first question using this example that we
47:02
talked about today is the cost of sampling and analytics included in the
47:08
cost of treatment and if so how much of that twenty dollars not anyone’s one
47:13
cents per acre is it like so not to be specific because we don’t know all the regions cost for collecting soil can you
47:20
broadly talk about how that breaks down for value of collects in the soil doing
47:25
the lab work doing the analysis and the recommendations and then how does that get back to the grower in some taught
47:32
some form of number sure so the Boren
47:37
example itself does not have the cost of the sampling the Boren example is the
47:44
cost of the prescription or the application of the boron the cost of the
47:49
application itself and the cost of the product so just everything related to
47:55
that application itself versus the yield impact was all that was put into those
48:00
numbers so yes you know you could break
48:05
out these soil sampling cost in an associate into those numbers as well if
48:10
you tuesd but there’s a lot of other things that soil sampling is benefiting us as well
48:16
the line application itself had a big enough impact in savings of lime and
48:24
yield increase to pay for the opposite soil sampling program in itself in entirety this poor on application yeah
48:31
well we’re looking at the net profit of 40 dollars an acre also definitely covers the cost of of
48:39
the of the sampling and the application itself as well and then you know the
48:44
added benefits we get from the potassium phosphorus and making these applications
48:50
as well harder to measure obviously building soils a long-term goal and a long-term
48:55
plan but having done it for multiple years I mean we see the benefits and we don’t spend fertilizer on any of our
49:02
ground that isn’t in a Gerta brief so the cost of doing that sampling was
49:10
about 16 dollars an acre for the collection and the lab results all in so
49:16
divided over us four-year program or looking at about four dollars an acre a year for the sampling and then the
49:24
prescription costs is you know anywhere from three to five dollars an acre depending on the amount and entirety for
49:32
every time that the prescription gets applied so you know we’re when we’re talking four five six dollars an acre a
49:38
year for this level of data management depending upon your comp rotation in it
49:45
how many times want a sample I think there’s an excellent value there when you’re when you’re starting to get into
49:50
the twenty and thirty to forty dollar an acre return on investment and and then
49:56
smarter decisions we have and you know more importantly the ability to apply
50:01
this proven the karana me that we all know more accurately across Pacific now
50:09
thanks Mike and as you as you’re talking dollars keep in mind that for this specific field the these numbers are in
50:17
Canadian dollars so if you’re if you’re a listening from the US the you know all
50:23
pricing is different based on your region first soil collection or the lab that you may use and for Canadian
50:29
dollars it’s the US dollars about 0.75 no 0.71 I’m sorry so around at thirty percent difference
50:36
in price there but the the the scale remains generally the same with
50:41
collection lab work and insights
50:47
the last question we have so far gets right back to the boron question is is
50:53
what is the highest application rate at we’re on that you’re comfortable with if the field has less than point less than
51:00
0.5 parts per million so I’ve got a really discrepant feel to help what is
51:06
your thoughts on jump-starting it that’s a good question and I really wanted to
51:11
put two pounds of boron on and I got told we would probably be ok with that
51:19
but I’m very happy with the robots we had with this product worked out for a
51:29
nice equal to juggs across the 35 acre field which is why it wound up being that one point two three pounds this
51:35
save cost and not have any extra product left over I’m gonna stick at that pound
51:41
a pound and a half for the next little bit for this testing and I’m going to
51:48
try to do it for the next five years to see if we can start seeing any trends and increases in our soil testing values
51:55
next time we go back and resample this field and also to see if we continue to see a positive response on to the
52:03
treatment as the years go by I’m hoping we can build soil at this level but I’m
52:09
not sure we can so short answer is I don’t know and I’m equally afraid of
52:17
affecting crop in a negative way so I think if we can see a positive response from an application at this level it’s
52:25
economically feasible and we just need to see how it’s if it’s a rate in which
52:30
we can we can make a long term effect
52:36
now thanks Mike I appreciate the feedback and those
52:42
questions I appreciate everybody joining us today I know learned some challenging times we
52:49
know it’s number one growing season or planting seasons and a lot of prep is going on number two we know everybody is
52:54
having some challenges with physical isolation due to store fronts being closed
53:00
is not able to have grower meetings this is one way we’re trying to help continue to educate since we can’t meet with
53:05
growers we can’t get out into storefronts to continue to host these webinars everybody that attended we
53:13
appreciate it today we will send you a link to this webinar once we get it uploaded we’ll send you a link so you
53:18
can you can download we listen and share if you’d like and highly recommend please do so if you do have some
53:25
recommendations of things you would like us to talk about by all means please
53:32
please send those to us by email and we actually did just get it up one more question and we have enough time to
53:38
answer that for a four dollar sampling and a $5 prescription so just using
53:44
rough numbers one is the insights the analytics cost like sure so the soil
53:55
insights where you get the curves and those and those graphs that require the
54:00
yield data analysis along with a high enough resolution soil sampling that we
54:05
can actually pull data from relatively
54:19
cheap information these enzymes and I would say that that only needs to be
54:25
done every time I can for every actor
54:30
every soil sample every three to four years depending on what your frequency
54:35
is the application of a sample so as Carla mentioned in the presentation to
54:43
have that after the results come back grab the year of yield that’s most close to the soil sample itself that hasn’t
54:52
had a fertilizer application get those results done and get some of those insights thanks for you if you want to
55:00
get the block approach with the analysis of the prescription that’s usually
55:07
something that we need to add in ahead of time to the prescription obviously
55:12
we’re not just gonna do it general without the blocks we have to have the
55:17
blocks in pipe before the application is done so that we can make sure that we know where everything is and there should be targeted and that has that’s
55:25
where that fight of the hours comes in that would be built into that description typically it’s three dollars an acre for
55:30
a prescription typically in our area and then we add two dollars for the insertion of the box and the analysis
55:37
and all the data and the insights for you at the end of the season so depending on which two will you pick
55:43
there it’s you know roughly an extra dollar or two dollars you know for each
55:49
of those different services all right thank you Mike
55:56
with that again we thank you for your time everybody know it’s uh we really
56:01
value your time and definitely value your questions it helps us understand where the knowledge gaps are out in the
56:08
industry and where we need to do better at our education efforts we appreciate everybody join us and with that we’ll
56:14
see you hopefully in a couple weeks where we come out with another educational series thank you everybody
56:20
good bye