Is Precision Agriculture for You?

Soil Doctor® System

Is Precision Farming For You?
Do You Need It?.....Can You Handle It?

Practicing Precision Farming Already
If you have a small farm, you may have been practicing Precision Farming for decades, treating small subfields differently, based on all your intense experience, over many years, with your family's fields. You may be applying as little as thirty LBS N on fields with strong histories of manure management, similarly reducing your P& K application as well, while doubling those levels on fields with lesser manure histories. If your efficiency ratios (Crop Production to Ag-Input ratios) tend to be higher than what you generally hear in the media or from academia, then you are clearly on the right track.

But if you've got too many acres to treat differently by manual means, then you should look into Precision Farming, because boosting your Production to Input ratios boosts your Net profits.

Do You Need It?
That depends upon what "It" is. CTI believes that everybody needs those technologies which immediately yield an economic return on their investment, and recommends caution with all others.

The Soil Doctor® System automatically gives you a measurable economic return, while benefits from Mapping-based technologies are based upon questions only you can answer......

Have you been farming the same fields for over a decade?
Do you know them like the back of your hand?
Do you have no need to effectively convey your fields' productivity or limitation pockets to "outsiders", like a banker or a distant landlord, or to "newcomers", like a college graduate offspring?
Are you seldom surprised by the impact of inadequate or inefficient pesticide or herbicide management?
And, do you have a good feel for the areas which --even in the dry years-- can benefit from drainage work/investment?


If the answer to all these questions is "Yes", then you probably don't "need" to map. You may just map because you feel like it, instead.

But Can You Handle Precision Farming?
Many in agriculture advise that Precision Farming must begin with Yield mapping, five years of yield data. But that narrow view is biased, and it drives away all those growers who know that they don't have the resources to play computer mapping expert, that they Can't Handle that extra drain on their time, their patience, or their income.

CTI believes that you must begin with whatever immediately gives you an economic return on your investment. The Soil Doctor® System is one example. With that return you can then afford to experiment with other PA technologies.

But Can You Really Handle, Real Precision Farming?
Briefly, the answer is "No" if you believe that "going through the motions" of Precision Farming is "Good Enough".

More specifically, the answer really depends upon your attitude towards any of the following typical operation measures:

Calibrating Your Radar Gun & Incorporating the Results
Calibrating Your Pump & Incorporating the Results
Calibrating Your Flow System & Incorporating the Results
Conducting a Flow Demonstration & Incorporating the Results
Examining Your Fertilizer, Nozzles, Valves, etc. for Unwanted Debris
Conducting Recommended System Checkouts
Installing, Operating, and Maintaining Your Components (planter, cultivator, coulters, etc.) as Recommended by the Manufacturer
Responding Immediately to System Warnings and
Attending to Other Normal Operation Requirements

If any of these procedures is just too taxing for you, if they are procedures that you routinely ignore, then you really need to think twice before entering Precision Farming, because Precision Farming is about taking care of the details and the above details are your part of the "Precision" picture.

But, if you're like most Soil Doctor® customers, you've been taking care of these details and many, many more like them, for many, many years; in which case, You Are Ready, Able and Willing for Real Precision Farming and All the $Benefits$ that Go With It!

NOTE: As one Grower put it, in those years when you only have six days to get over 4,500 acres, sometimes just refueling seems like too much trouble.......

1 800 N DR - CROP (800 637-2767)
FAX: 281 370-2470
E-Mail: colburn@soildoctor.com