Nitrogen Management: Precision Agriculture Means Variable Rate Application

Effective Nitrogen Management is
Not just a philosophy, Not just a theory,
Not just a series of good ideas, and Not something Only a Map can reveal.

 

To Maps ----- To Customer Names and Data

 

Effective Nitrogen Management is Management that produces Real Results which a producer can easily see on a financial statement.

 

Terry Behymer of Mt. Sterling, Illinois has been a satisfied Soil Doctor® Farmer since 1988.

 

He and his dad, LeRoy, have won several nationwide NCGA yield contests, sometimes applying as little as 70 LBS N on fields yielding over 240 bushels.

How was that possible?

 

Two years of alfalfa set-aside seemed to have provided --for that season-- enough nitrogen to make up the level of N needed --beyond the 70 LBS-- to support the over 240 bushel corn.

 

But the Soil Doctor® System is not about Winning Contests, not about Using Virtually No Fertilizer, and not about Giving Away Management Control to a Couple of Computers.

 

The Soil Doctor® System is about

Growers Taking Full Management Control for Themselves.

 

Normal usage for Real Precision, Cost-Effective Farming involves selecting Yield Goals consistent with the field's five year average. But, if your decision is to Enter and Win Yield Contests on select fields, then select the Yield Goal you want and shoot for the limit!

 

And, Yes, we do mean "limit". More is not always better, not even with fertilizer. Since nitrate levels above 40 ppm are detrimental to maximum yields, we make sure that you do not hurt your crop by over-fertilizing --even when your goal is to win national yield contests.

You Determine the Production Strategy. Let the Soil Doctor® System sweat the details of the foot-to-foot, variable rate fertilizer application for you. (To Agronomic test upon which the Soil Doctor® Nitrogen Applicator is based.)

 

EXAMPLE: The Behymers average Farm-wide rates of less than .62 LBS added N/BU of corn, and the Webers (their maps follow) average less than .45 LBS added N/BU.

 

Like that above, this page, along with Best Kept Secrets, is Results-Oriented, presenting real growers, with real demands, for real Precision Performance, and with real Soil Doctor® Results.

 

Active or Passive Precision Farming?

 

In late 1993, with the entry of Deere & Company into the precision farming arena, the farm press began to focus on yield monitors and speculate about tangible (hopefully), future benefits from passively acquiring information for years, for later analysis. Advising "First, Start with Mapping Yield", an initial five year period to amass a body of crop field data was widely advised as an essential, passive prerequisite before taking any action.

 

Of those who began the passive studies in the 1992 crop season, who has now made profound management decisions which are dramatically different from what they would have done, based primarily on that yield data, and then implemented those decisions to significantly and positively impact their bottom line, as many predicted would occur? Or, is this "wait and see" concept like the old USSR "Five Year Plan", which became a "Ten Year Plan", then a "Fifteen Year Plan", etc.? Has the passive approach been a big experiment by some --a test of one's theories-- at the cost of producers who needed to recover those PA investments, not just generate many maps? Or has this "wait and see" period been a deliberate delay for others to decide what products they should begin developing, to address the grower's bottom line?

 

CTI invites all comments on this subject area, and encourages the publication of results by all producers and vendors that confirm that the five year wait --without taking any actions-- was worth it. More importantly, was just waiting really the prudent thing to do? Or, were there obvious, agronomically supportable, immediate actions that should have been taken to improve economic returns? Were such cost-effective actions deferred, because data recording --without taking actions-- was promoted to be far more intelligent than 1) taking action, 2) recording data of that action, 3) recording the yield results from that action, and 4) conducting Control Trials and recording all that data, to cross-check the effect of the action.

 

So far, by layering five years of yield data, some growers have documented that the high producing land in the wet years will be the low producing land in the dry years and vice versa --something that they knew before they mapped their data. Other growers, however, who have layered only the last three years of data --all WET years-- are out installing drainage tiles, an expenditure that they hopefully won't regret in a "normal" or dry year.

 

Over the last five years, the advisability of relying solely upon certain precision farming tools, in the manner growers were led to believe would eventually benefit from those tools, has been questioned. Meanwhile, the precise capabilities of the Soil Doctor® System in efficiently managing nitrogen fertilizer, year after year has also come to light. Yield mapping alone, grid sampling, and VRT based on GIS analyses have not demonstrated, in either the paper studies nor the field tests to date, the substantial economic returns anticipated.

 

What is wrong with the snapshot view we have been given of many of the precision farming practices? What does it tell us about the true potential of precision farming concepts?

 

What Does Precision Agriculture Teach Us about Nitrogen Management?

 

Farm magazines agree that Nitrogen Management is the first place to take action in production operations, because it is the change most likely to result in an economic return to the producer. With the first field test of a Soil Doctor® system resulting in a Grower-recorded, Grower-calculated Net Profit increase of over $10/Acre back in 1987, this information comes as no surprise to CTI. In fact, as far back as 1982, CTI decided that nitrogen management was THE place to start, to help growers make more money.

 

What specifically has been learned about effective nitrogen management from precision farming investigations which rely upon yield maps alone? Not that much, and the magazine editors are starting to take stock in that fact by asking each other:"Show Me the Money!!!" (Farm Progress editors). With the promoted emphasis on information acquisition and the awe and wonder of displaying that information; reliable, "precise advice" from yield maps and grid sampling alone appears to be in very short supply.

 

Prairie Farmer Magazines recently ran one of the most positive articles carried in quite some time about precision farming, but the economic returns reported by the University of Illinois CES were only "projections" of "potential" fertilizer savings, not real, recorded, year after year, savings; and they were only $4.90 to $8.31/acre (See: "Will precision farming make you money?", June, 1997). Costs of practicing map-based precision farming were estimated at $8.00 per acre. NO YIELD BENEFITS WERE DISCUSSED AT ALL.

 

Moreover, the savings projected were considered to be impressive "potential" for precision agriculture, but these economic levels were actually Achieved by Soil Doctor® technology more than ten years ago, when Mr. Terry Schneider (on his Shirley, Illinois) recorded over $10/Acre Net profit increase --from saving nitrogen fertilizer and simultaneously increasing yield.

 

Today, CTI growers report nitrogen fertilizer savings and companion yield increases combined which range from $15/Acre, upwards to $30/Acre (the Weber Beef, Inc. Maps that follow.), and net profit increases even to $40/Acre (See chart that follows.) AGAIN, the numbers in the maps and chart are NOT "projections" of "potential" fertilizer savings and "what might happen by calculation" yield benefits.

 

Financial returns are normally divided at about 1/3 due to fertilizer savings and 2/3 due to yield increases. These are dollars that have been documented by producers on the land that they farm, and they are the kind of dollars that accrue each and every year. That real world performance, versus speculations and projections, is what separates Soil Doctor® technology from the rest of Precision Agriculture. But don't ask CTI, Ask CTI customers. They are a demanding bunch!

Let's examine what more can be done with precision farming mapping technology --by Actually Layering Different Data-- (instead of just talking about layering) and --Far More Importantly-- what that data can mean to producer economics. Along the way we will discuss the State-of-the-Art of information acquisition and analysis.

 

The Bottom line on the Soil Doctor® Nitrogen Application:

 

The Soil Doctor® Method is far more efficient than the standard, flat rate practice, as recommended by fertilizer dealers, extension, and research scientists who cannot effectively apply actual "precision", foot-to-foot, application decisions.

 

We are all familiar with the rule-of-thumb in corn production, that 1 1/4 LBS of N must be added to the soil for each bushel of yield goal, but the field maps below demonstrate that crops and soils do not faithfully REQUIRE that out-dated application rule.

Soil Doctor® System Nitrogen Use Efficiency

In an Illinois Corn field

 

Seven field maps are presented which summarize data from the 1996 growing season. The data was acquired from normal field operations for both nitrogen application and harvest near Geneseo, Illinois. All Maps herein are Courtesy of Weber Beef, Geneseo, IL and CTI.

 

Larger scale maps and detailed text describing the small maps below are available here.

Applying 1.25 LBS N/bushel targeted is not the most efficient application method	The bottom line on a Precision Farming technique is its ability to improve production economics	Yield maps provide a good qualitative feel for what is going on in the field
Application data	Yield Data	Where the least N fertilizer was applied, the highest yields were obtained.
CTI Soil Sensor Index Reveals Yield Potential

RETURN will bring you back to these maps.

 

 

On-Farm Producer Experience

Terry and Denny Jarvis hosted the 1995 Farm Progress Show in Terre Haute, Indiana.They've also been satisfied with their Soil Doctor® Nitrogen Applicators (they own two) since 1991, when they saved 3 semi-loads of Nitrogen while keeping their yields up. They remain convinced there is no safer way to save substantial levels of nitrogen fertilizer.

George Holsapple of Jewett, Illinois purchase his Soil Doctor® System in 1996, despite the advice of the overseeing manager of his fertilizer dealer. The manager himself was Officiously, Decisively, and Unequivocally advised by an agronomist from the University of Illinois at Urbana and by employees of a major fertilizer manufacturer/distributor: "YOUR CUSTOMER MUST NOT BUY A SOIL DOCTOR UNIT!!!" After discovering that none of these "experts" had used a unit, had seen a unit in use, and had not even spoken to anyone who had; George called Dr. Lloyd Murdock (University of Kentucky at Princeton) who has conscientiously tested the Soil Doctor System. Dr. Murdock assured George that the unit performed for him exactly as Crop Technology, Inc. represents, and George then invested in his Soil Doctor® unit.

Due to the repeated drenching rains of the spring of 1996, George used his VariPlant controller almost three years worth. He appreciated the ease of automatically, dramatically changing both his plant population (a range he chose from 15,000/Acre to 35,000/Acre) and his starter rates in each of his fields. He was pleased to be able to save several thousands of dollars of fertilizer --in a year where Mother-Nature continuously robbed him-- of his seed investment, his nitrogen, and more. While satisfied with his mapped plant population, he was not surprised nor amazed by its variability, nor by its specific distribution.

George says: "What kind of a farmer would I be, if I didn't know where my best and my worst ground were in my fields? I was amazed only that the Soil Doctor knew the fields as well as I did, and in some places far better than I remembered, at first. The VariPlant control, teamed with the Rawson controller, planted extremely variably and automatically ---the way I would have, if I could have done it on my own. As for saving nitrogen fertilizer at its current, high price; Well, that's exactly what my business needs right now."

 

Dave and Jeff Weber of Geneseo, Illinois

have been satisfied Soil Doctor® Farmers since 1992. They map yield with Case's new AFS yield monitor and have participated in Case's VR planter development as well as Deere's VR planter development.

The Webers farm Environmentally Sensitive Ground and believe farmers should address nitrogen management (easily done with the Soil Doctor System) before they map yield, mapping only the remaining problems. Claiming that "When you grid-sample and map, you always find that you need more fertilizer, not less", their FS dealer told them in 1992: "Do NOT buy a Soil Doctor® Unit !" As Dave now puts it: "I will never flat rate my nitrogen fertilizer again.

THAT'S WHAT REAL"PRECISION" IS ALL ABOUT!

And the satisfaction continues with the:

Alversons of Chester, South Dakota

Browns of Mulberry, Indiana
Kettleys of Steward,Illinois

Walks of Neoga, Illinois

Persingers of Boggtown, Indiana
Starkeys of Brownsburg, Indiana

Hostetlers of Burr Oak, Michigan
Olsons of Lanesboro, Minnesota

Luchts of Jackson, Minnesota
Bargas of Ansonia, Ohio

Groths of Winchester, Indiana
Lewis's of Osage, Iowa; etc.; etc.

Their only regret: Not Making More $Money$ sooner.

Many May Promise . . .
Soil Doctor® Applicators Deliver

No one else in precision farming offers such a generous $Performance Guarantee$ because no one else's technology reliably delivers --foot-to-foot-- for its customers. Insist on $results$ for your investment. Insist on Soil Doctor® Technology.

Field Performance Data of
The Soil Doctor® Prescription Applicator
Side-by-Side Comparisons Conducted by Customers

Corn Yield evaluated at $3.00/bushel; Anhydrous @ 15¢/lb N; 28% @ 23¢/lb N

Their only regret:
Not Making More $Money$ Sooner.

Many May Promise ......................Soil Doctor Applicators Deliver!

CTI's Money-Back Guarantee to its customers also Guarantees --to CTI-- that every year "Someone" Truly-Independent will go through all the trouble/hassle to conduct fresh Side-by-Side (not field-by-field) Comparisons, Designed Specifically to Uncover the True Performance of the Soil Doctor® System on Their Very Real Farm.

To 26 years of corn cost, price, and profit (or lack thereof) data from conventional management.

The Crop Technology Performance Guarantee
==================================
If your properly installed, maintained, and used Soil Doctor® Applicator does not provide you with a measurable economic advantage over your current practice the first season on your farm, your purchase price will be cheerfully refunded.
==================================
Insist on $Results$ for Your Precision Agriculture Investment.

""Terry's operation has relied upon the system since 1987 to maximize his production, while minimizing his fertilizer usage. Like all CTI customers, Terry had no desire, no need, to conduct comparison trials after year three, which is the main reason CTI has a Performance Guarantee: to get at least New Customers to conduct side-by-side comparisons. As Terry put it: "Hey, I know it works! Why should I --go through all that trouble-- to keep proving it to myself, year-after-year? BUT with Terry's GreenStar Yield Monitor, Terry and his son-in-law Matt Hughes don't mind conducting these tests for CTI or anyone else who wants to know the facts about Soil Doctor® technology, real-field performance. After All, Many May Promise, but the Soil Doctor System Delivers.

To Industry-Unique:

• $Economic$ Performance Guarantee
• Soil Doctor® Soil Sensors
• Soil Doctor® VariPlant Variable Rate Seeding
• Soil Doctor® Accuracy
• U.S. Agriculture's Best Kept Secret
• Frequently Asked Questions

Copyright 1997 through 2002, Crop Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved