Farmers Reap Benefits of ESRI Technology

Site-Specific On-Farm Research Puts ArcView GIS to Use

By Dr. Harold F. Reetz, Jr., Vice President, Foundation for Agronomic Research, and Midwest Director, Potash & Phosphate Institute

Flush with recent technological advancements, field research for crop and soil management systems has dramatically evolved during the last five years. The availability of powerful computers, sensors, and controller technology, and the installation of GPS for agricultural equipment has provided new ways to measure and manage variability within production fields. The large data sets accumulated from these electronic applications require collection, interpretation, and management. As a result, ESRI's ArcView GIS, its extensions, and related tools have become standard equipment in a modern farmer's toolbox.

Ripples from the changes on the farm have reached research programs at universities and within the agricultural industry. For the first time, variability of crop yields within a field can be conveniently and accurately measured and documented with GPS coordinates, enabling the exploration of spatial distribution and its relationship to physical and management changes across the field.

Instead of using small, confined plots where within-field variability can be controlled, researchers can now impose treatments in large blocks within a field, measure the response to those treatments, and statistically analyze the results. Alternatively, they can measure variability in crop yield or other growth responses across the field and correlate these changes to various parameters of natural variability. Managing these data sets is a growing challenge for farmers, their management advisers, and their input suppliers. They rely heavily on ArcView GIS and ArcView Spatial Analyst to manage and interpret this data.

The Foundation for Agronomic Research and the Potash & Phosphate Institute are coordinating a multi-state, multidisciplinary research and education program to evaluate site-specific management systems for Midwest corn and soybean farmers. This program was initiated in 1995 under a grant from the United Soybean Board, which administers funds collected in a national soybean producer check-off. During the last four years numerous industry and government agency cosponsors, including ESRI, have contributed support to the project, which is an excellent example of how sponsors can forge major research and educational efforts.

The project compares site-specific management systems with management based on field average conditions. Data collected from a variety of sources provides a detailed characterization of the soil-, crop-, and climate-management systems for the field. All of this data is cataloged in ArcView GIS to readily determine the spatial distribution of various components.

The project includes approximately 30 fields in nine Midwest states. Similar projects have also been initiated in the mid-South and mid-Atlantic regions. All of the work is conducted on cooperator farmers' fields and all of the field operations are conducted with field-scale equipment. The treatments are imposed to create side-by-side comparisons of site-specific management (rates of inputs based on the parameters for the specific area of the field) and field-average management (rates of inputs determined by the average of those parameters over the entire field).

For example, in selected Illinois fields, soil nutrient levels are estimated by testing soil on a one-acre grid. The rate of potash fertilizer needed is determined for the site-specific plot based on the soil test level in that one-acre block; the rate for the field average is determined by averaging all soil samples for the whole field. These treatments are laid out in paired plots throughout the field.

The plot of treatments is loaded into the rate controller software in the onboard computer of the fertilizer applicator. Treatments can then be automatically set as the applicator moves across the field. The controller adjusts the rate on the fly according to the GIS data entered into the computer and matched with the GPS coordinates of each position in the field.

During the season, the farmer or his field scouts make numerous visits to the field and document their observations with GPS coordinates in ArcView GIS. At harvest, they record yield data and grain quality components on the fly into ArcView GIS data banks. Farmers compare variability in yield data with the input variables and other observations along with physical factors and management databases also cataloged in ArcView GIS.

Over the course of the project, several thousand data layers have been accumulated and are now being analyzed with ArcView GIS and related ESRI software. Eventually, the product, Farm Research Analyst, will be available from Growmark, Inc., one of the project sponsors and an ESRI business partner.

To learn more about this project, watch for postings at www.farmresearch.com or contact Dr. Harold F. Reetz, Jr., vice president of the Foundation for Agronomic Research and the Midwest director of the Potash & Phosphate Institute (tel.: 217-762-2074, fax: 217-762-8655, E-mail: hreetz@ppi-far.org).