Advances in farm machinery mean that many growers have built up a significant bank of yield maps over the years - sometimes as many as 12 harvests' worth of information. However, making real use of this data and accurately analysing it to measure in field variation has been impossible, until now...
Precision farming leader, SOYL will be demonstrating a brand new performance mapping service at LAMMA in January. The tool uses a powerful algorithm to cut through complex yield data and help growers turn multiple yield
maps into a single map that can help them make business decisions and point to areas where further investigation may be required.
The SOYL performance mapping tool takes years and years of yield data and analyses the various layers to identify long term trends. The final trend map is then used as the starting point for a range of investigative options to eliminate or manage variability in yield caused by a range of factors such as compaction, drainage issues, soil depth and texture and low levels of organic matter.
SOYL commercial director, Simon Parrington, explains: "One of the most common questions I am asked by growers is, 'I record yield data every year on all my fields but what do I do with all this data and how can it benefit my business?' Well this tool analyses the data for them
at the press of a button and can give a real insight into trends in a field over a period of time. Typically the map will point us in the direction to carry out further investigations in the form of detailed soil inspections."
SOYL has demonstrated that the service will more than pay for itself - often four-fold. "It's a relatively low cost way of making great use of information that is already sitting in many farm managers' offices," adds Mr Parrington.
SOYL is at LAMMA on Stand 821, along with colleagues from Frontier Agriculture, Kings Game Cover and Conservation Crops and Nomix Enviro. Growers are invited to visit the stand to see for themselves examples of the performance mapping tool and resulting yield maps.
