If You Can’t Measure It, How Are You Going To Manage It

2015 Precision Agriculture Conference Breakout Session

Getting an MRI provides physicians with in-depth information that isn’t accessible by simply examining a patient in an office. The information you learn may change current medications you’re taking, as well as provide the opportunity to explore alternative treatments. What you do with the information from the results is up to you, however, wouldn’t you want to know if there was something serious you could address? Something you wouldn’t have known if you didn’t go for the non-invasive medical test?

Like an MRI, many precision agriculture tools allow you to gain invaluable information about your farm business. If you can perform a routine test that can help point our nutrient deficiencies and surpluses, soil pH, and Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) to help determine the appropriate fertilizer your soil needs for a specific crop to thrive would you? Soil testing is just one example of precision agriculture that can help you make informed decisions that can help your farm’s bottom line.

In a breakout session at the 2015 Precision Agriculture Conference in London, Dan Rooney, Strategic Development Manager at Trimble Agriculture discussed one of these tools, Soil Information and PurePixel technologies with the Trimble Connected Farm platform.

Like an MRI, Connected Farm is Trimble’s integrated operations management solution that combines a variety of solutions to increase efficiency that helps users make better decisions for their farming business. How do you know what the soil profile of your field is if you don’t have the data? SIS is hardware and software that work together to create detailed and important soil information, helping you make informed decisions to impact your business.  Knowing information such as the depth and thickness variance of a field is critical to understanding the impact of irrigation decisions. If you don’t have the data, are you guessing when making irrigation decisions?

Trimble’s PurePixel is an imagery product that helps producers save time by targeting specific locations for crop scouting instead of scouting an entire field. Resources, such as time and money, can be wasted on an entire field when only a portion requires attention. Another feature of PurePixel is that the tool is able to identify differences in crop health and maturity, including when the crop health is strong. When working with the tool, images can be compared – so farmers are able to observe differences between the same field at different times.

As every field is unique, precision agriculture tools allow you to better understand each field, better yet, areas of a field. Once you have the data, you can make improved management decisions to benefit your business. After all, if you can’t measure it, how can you manage it?