Category Archives: Agronomy

Agronomy, Nutrients, Precision Agriculture, Research, Soil, Water

New food production paradigms: why farm systems are changing

August 15, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

HBB_RSNZ_Header

A public lecture offered by the Hawke’s Bay Branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Dr Charles Merfield, Director
Future Farming Centre, Biological Husbandry Unit Lincoln

7:00pm – 8:30 pm, Wednesday 26th August 2015
Hawke’s Bay Holt Planetarium, Chambers St, Napier

13032009338 sm Modern farming systems are 70 years old. They have been very successful at meeting their key aim; maximising food production. However, society is asking farmers to take on new aims including providing ecosystem services to protect and enhance the environment.

Four key technologies created modern farming: fossil fuels, synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, soluble lithospheric fertilisers and agrichemical pesticides. There are increasing issues with each of these both from the input (e.g. cost, resistance) and outcome (e.g. pollution) sides.

Sustainable agriculture is smart agriculture that uses all available tools to find long lasting alternatives. A key to developing and analysing farm systems is overlapping the sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and ecology. Sustainable farming can be viewed as a martial art, probing and testing the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses then using smarts, not brute force, to win the contest.

Viewing farming through the eye of Darwin’s Law of Evolution will allow more sustainable and durable solutions to be developed.

Dr Charles Merfield is the founding head of the BHU Future Farming Centre which focuses on ‘old school’ agri/horticultural science and extension.

Charles studied commercial horticulture in the UK and then spent seven years managing organic vegetable farms in the UK and NZ.

In the mid 1990s he moved into research, focusing on sustainable agriculture including soil management, pest, disease and weed management general crop and pasture production.

He has been fortunate to work and experience agriculture in diverse range of countries including NZ, UK, Ireland, USA and Uruguay. He therefore has a broad knowledge of real-world farming as well as science as well a deep understanding of the history of agriculture and science, which enables him to paint the big-picture of where modern farming has come from and where it is going.

Thanks to the Foundation for Arable Research, Charles Merfield will also be offering one day workshops for farmers and industry. For details see the FAR website>

FAR

Agronomy, MicroFarm, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Sensing, Soil

Onion Research Underway

August 12, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

OnionsNZ

After months of planning our OnionsNZ, Plant and Food, Sustainable Farming Fund onion variability project, things are underway at the MicroFarm!

Gerry Steenkamer planted the crop on 2nd August. Rhinestone seed was donated by Vigour Seeds and treated for us by Seed and Field Services. We are very grateful for their support.

An initial residual herbicide application of Dacthal and Stomp was applied. We had a lot of wireweed last year and are keen to get on top of that.

Plant and Food Research staff have established plots for detailed monitoring. They are doing many very detailed individual plant measurements at plot scale. LandWISE is coordinating a number of sensing surveys of the whole crop using a range of technologies.

20150805_PlotMarking — Plant and Food staff setting up monitoring plots in onions beds. (Wintery southerly)

More details for the research programme and measurements are available on the MicroFarm website.

Plant and Food researchers have developed growth models for a range of crops. This work will help refine their onion growth model, a key to understanding the development and variability in crops. The detailed plot measurements will also be compared with the whole paddock sensor measurements to corroborate and calibrate them.

The first paddock scale surveys have been completed. These give some base information and understanding of the site and it’s variability. Maps as pdfs are available on the MicroFarm website.

One of the first “layers” we can look at is Google Earth imagery – free info on the web! Have a look at your place: use the time slider to view a series of aerial and satellite images captured over recent and not so recent years.

MicroFarm Onion Beds with Winter Cover Crops (as shown on Google Earth image 19 April 2015)

We have posted some of “our place” images and some interpretation here>.

Pagebloomer vs Page Bloomer Associates completed an RTK-GPS survey using Trimble equipment from GPS Control Systems. The data were used to create surface ponding and runoff risk maps.

AgriOptics completed a Dual-EM survey in early July. This gave shallow and deep soil information maps. The dry winter means soil had not reached field capacity when the survey was made, so we are a little cautious when interpreting the results. But we risked not getting a survey at all, and by planting in August it had still not rained. With beds formed and crop planted and emerging, we have no opportunity now to repeat the survey.

AltusUAV AltusUAS has prepared NDVI maps of cover crops from UAV mounted sensors. They will be making repeated measurements as the crop develops. AltusUAS is now using MicaSense technology for efficient multispectral image collection.

ASL_Square_150 ASL Software has provided their Cover Map canopy cover measurement tool fitted with high accuracy GPS. We can now use that technology to measure relative plant development and ensure our readings (our mapped data) are located in the correct beds!

Agronomy, Nutrients, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research

Free Fertiliser Spreader Test Tool Released

August 11, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

What is FertSpread?

FertSpread is a free-to-use on-line calculator and reporting tool to support on-farm calibration of fertiliser spreading equipment. It can be used on any internet connected device: computer, tablet or smartphone.

Access FertSpread at www.fertspread.nz

FertSpread uses field test results to calculate fertiliser product Size Guide Number (SGN) and Uniformity Index (UI) ensuring that evenness of application is within the recommended ranges.

Other calculations include fertiliser flow rate, required spreader speed, and actual application rate (kg/ha).

Finally and most importantly the tool allows you to analyse your Broadcast spreader configuration and based on your test results allows you to optimise your bout widths and ensure that you’re laying consistent, cost effective fertiliser spread patterns where ever possible.

Why was FertSpread developed?

FertSpread is one output from the Sustainable Farming Fund “On-Farm Fertiliser Applicator Calibration” project. The project arose from repeated requests by farmers for a quick and simple way to check performance of fertiliser spreading by themselves or contractors. They wanted to know that spreading was acceptable.

Fertiliser application calibration procedures suitable for farmers applying nutrients with their own equipment allow on-farm checks to ensure and demonstrate application equipment is performing to expectations.

A calibration check includes assessment and correcting of both application rate (kg/ha) and uniformity (CV). Farmers indicated that checking the paddock application rate is reasonably easy and commonly done. Very few reported completing any form of uniformity assessment.

Assessing Performance

Uniformity requires collection of samples from a spreading event and calculation of a uniformity value. It will involve either physical or theoretical over-lapping of adjacent swaths. Use of standard test trays is strongly advised, given the need for baffling to stop fertiliser bouncing out.

Weighing samples is complicated by the very small quantities involved – often a single prill in the outer containers. Scales weighing to 0.01g are required, but satisfactory options are readily available at reasonable price. If a larger sample is wanted, two or more runs at the chosen application rate should be made rather than applying some higher rate.

Analysing collected data

Analysing fertiliser spread data is a somewhat complex task. The effect of overlapping runs (either round and round or to and fro) needs to be taken into account, and then the statistics to describe how uniform application is must be made. And in most cases, calculations should consider a number of different bout widths.

FertSpread was developed to process collected field data and generate statistical reports automatically. This reduces potential errors and makes the whole process very quick and efficient.

Key outputs are measured application rate, the CV at the specified bout width and the bout width range at which CV is within accepted limits.

The results of the uniformity test are given as the bout width where the coefficient of variation (CV) does not exceed a specified level. The maximum accepted CV is 15% for nitrogenous fertilisers and 25% for low analysis fertilisers.

NOTE: Different types of collection trays show varying levels of capture during testing. Some can lose a significant amount of fertiliser through “bounce-out”. Experience suggests the uniformity calculations are reasonably accurate, but the application rate may be under-reported. Check the application rate by dividing the quantity of fertiliser discharged by the area covered.

This project was undertaken by LandWISE Inc with funding from the MPI Sustainable Farming Fund. It was co-funded and supported by the Foundation for Arable Research and the Fertiliser Association.

FertSpreadPartners

Agronomy, Research

On-Farm Trials – goals and objectives

August 10, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

The LandWISE On-Farm Trial Guide series provides clear yet comprehensive descriptions for people wanting to get the greatest benefit from on-farm research.

OnFarmTrialGuide Set sm This post looks at the first steps: getting your goals and objectives sorted. We acknowledge the original authors; Peter Stone, Andrea Pearson and Maaike Bendall (then of Crop & Food Research).

Setting goals and objectives – what do you want to find out and why?

Know what you want to know, and why you want to know it. If you’re not clear on these, don’t start on your trial.

You need to have a clear and simple statement of what you want to know (objective) and why you want to know it (goal). Goals are statements of the overall target that you want to reach. Objectives are the specific questions that need answering for you to achieve those goals.

Let’s start with goals. A common goal would be to increase gross margin per hectare. There are obviously lots of ways that you could try to achieve this, but for the purposes of a single trial you need to focus on a single approach. Your goal might be to see whether increased plant population increases your gross margin per hectare.

Once you’ve got your goal clear, you can move onto your specific objective. In this case, a common objective would be to compare the gross margin from your current population with that from a higher population. Gross margin is made up of expenditure and receipts, so fulfilling the objective will require you to measure the amounts and values of inputs and outputs. Objectives should always be measurable.

You can see that setting a clear goal led naturally to a simple objective which, in turn, suggested the sorts of treatments and measurements that will need to be made for the trial to succeed. This gets you through the worst of the planning stage!

Setting goals and objectives isn’t usually a difficult task, but it does require some care. Fuzzy goals usually lead to poorly defined objectives which, in turn, produce unfocused trials and inconclusive results – an all round waste of time and effort.

If you find that your objective doesn’t relate adequately to your goal, have another go at it. By the same token, if your objective requires tricky treatments or more data collection than you can handle, modify it. The key is to be clear and simple.

If your goal and objectives can’t fit into a simple sentence, you’re probably biting off more than you can chew. Write them down and see if they pass muster.

If they’re not quite right, have another go at it. You’ll never regret spending time getting this part of the trial planning process just right. Mistakes made here almost always lead to trouble down the line.

Having established an achievable goal and objectives, it’s time to think about the treatments that you’ll apply and the measurements that you’ll make on your trial.

Summary:

A simple statement of what you want to know and why you want to know it is the essential first step in running successful on-farm trials.

End of section critical decision point

Can you write a clear statement of what you want to know from trial, and why you want to know it? This is important if you are to get the best from the next section –Getting the treatments right.

Agronomy, Automation, Drainage, Irrigation, MicroFarm, Nutrients, Planting, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Sensing, Soil, Tillage, Water

Onions Research – three year project

June 14, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

LandWISE has partnered with Onions New Zealand and Plant & Food Research in a three year project focused on understanding variability in onion crops. The project is funding by Onions NZ and the MPI Sustainable Farming Fund.

Dr Jane Adams, OnionsNZ Research and Innovation Manager, says the project, “Enhancing the profitability and value of New Zealand onions” is designed to provide the industry with tools to monitor and manage low yields and variability in onion yield and bulb quality.

It will incorporate precision agriculture with initial work to be done at the LandWISE MicroFarm. At the MicroFarm, we have been building increasing knowledge of the site, but will ramp that up with more layers of soil and crop information as we try to unpick factors contributing to lower yields and reduced quality.

Information about the 2014-2015 MicroFarm Onion crop can be found on the MicroFarm website.

The project proper starts on 1 July, but there has a lot of preparatory activity to ensure everything kicks of smoothly.

Anyone interested in joining a regional Focus Group supporting the project should
contact us>

Agronomy, Automation, Precision Agriculture, Sensing

LandWISE 2015: The Farm of 2030

May 25, 2015 LandWISE Admin

20-21 May 2015, Havelock North, NZ

Farmof2030Web

Looking for the next big thing in agriculture?

Maybe the next big thing is a small thing. Bigger equipment has given amazing work efficiencies and helped drive production and productivity. Are there any downsides?

As we seek to achieve efficient crop production, we need to manage variability. What are the drivers, what tools can help us? How do we link technology and agronomy?

Leave LandWISE 2015 with new understanding of where technology has taken us, where current development is opening possibilities and which things may yet be some way off.

The theme “The Farm of 2030” comes from a prediction made in 1980 by John Matthews of the UK National Institute for Agricultural Engineering Describing a farm fifty years in the future, soil quality and alternative machinery featured strongly. Computers and robotics were becoming available but GPS, internet and wireless were not.

Join us at our 13th Annual Conference, a meeting of technologists, farmers and their many support providers, where you can engage with leading researchers and practitioners.

Top presenters from Australia and New Zealand will update you on sensors, networks and robots, crop and field variability and what we can do to manage it. Dealing with troublesome weeds, identifying pest outbreaks, monitoring soil moisture and automating irrigation management. Can a robot do our scouting, our weed control, our mowing?

Ultimately, what will a farm look like in 2030? What do we need to be doing to make sure we are ready?

More here>

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Agronomy, LandWISE 2015, MicroFarm, Precision Agriculture

A message from BASF Crop Protection

May 25, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

LandWISE 2015 Platinum Sponsor – BASF Crop Protection

Fenton Hazelwood - BASF Crop Protection — Fenton Hazelwood – BASF Crop Protection

I would like to firstly thank Dan and Debbie and the entire LandWISE team for the opportunity to be here. It seems we are all getting increasingly busy, even with these Smart Phones. However, for me this annual LandWISE conference is a must do on the calendar, and I don’t say this lightly.

LandWISE and its members are focused on a topic that is dear to me; “sustainability”. Not just sustainability, a word to be thrown around because it sounds good, but sustainability in the true sense of the word. They are active in the pursuit of sustainable farming and have built a solid track record of success.

So BASF Crop Protection is very proud to again be a key sponsor of the Annual LandWISE conference. The philosophy of LandWISE fits very well with BASF Crop Protection: providing real solutions in our primary industry that will enable us to sustainably produce more saleable yield per hectare. Without the ability to sustainably produce more, we will struggle to feed a growing population.

Many in NZ feel we are insulated, but we are all part of the global stage. A few statistics resonate daily for me. I like this one, which helps engage non primary industry people:

We need to produce more food in the next 50 years, than has been produced in the last 10,000 years.

Give or take 10% either-way and this is a hell of task with available land for production reducing constantly.

It is well worth asking people you know, “What is the biggest job on earth?” There’s a video about it here>

BASF celebrates its 150th birthday this year; a HUGE milestone, and one that as a company we are incredibly proud of. May the next 150 years plus be as ground breaking. But I have some worries.

I am concerned in particular, that in the next 5 years or so our industry is going to see some very experienced individuals retire. Primary production in general is going to lose these individuals, people with extensive knowledge and wisdom.

Yes, there are more being trained, however we will be losing a block of knowledge spanning four or more decades. That “old knowledge” is extremely important as to go forward we really need to be a ware of the past. Imagine having no one with experience pre Glyphosate? And that is but one of many examples.

With a slow-down in new molecule introductions, chemical resistance management is becoming even more vital. There are challenges a plenty, of which makes the journey all the more interesting.

A constant challenge of looking after the molecules we have in preventing resistance management is at a mode of action level, not an active ingredient level. We need that thinking to permeate the entire industry, developers, suppliers, users and all. If we pay attention to detail, take care to understand how resistance develops and make sure our strategies do their best to prevent it, the chemistry we have can continue to help our production systems for longer.

And to all delegates and contributors of this conference, thank you for your support and your support to LandWISE, it is HUGELY appreciated.

Agronomy, Automation, LandWISE 2015, LandWISE People, Precision Agriculture, Sensing

Agri-Intelligent Systems: robots, data, and decisions

May 25, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

LandWISE 2015 Presenter, Tristan Perez

Tristan Perez Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Queensland University of Technology, QLD, Australia — Tristan Perez
Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems,
Queensland University of Technology, QLD, Australia

Since the 1960s, agriculture has seen significant advances in agrochemicals, crop and animal genetics, agricultural mechanisation and improved management practices. These technologies have been at the core of increased productivity and will continue to provide future incremental improvements. Data analytics, robotics, and autonomous systems are transforming industries such as mining, manufacturing, and health. We are starting to see automation of single agricultural processes such as animal and crop remote monitoring, robotic weed management, irrigation, nutrient decision support, etc. However, we envisage that the integration of these technologies together with a systems view of the farming enterprise and its place within the agri-food value chain will trigger the next wave of productive innovation in agriculture.

The challenge of the next agricultural revolution is to assist farming enterprises to make the management and business decisions that will optimise inputs such as labour, energy, water and agrochemicals and explicitly account for variability and uncertainty across the production system and along the agri-food value chain.

The opportunity for increased profitability, sustainability and competitiveness from finer-scale sensing and whole-farm decision-making and intervention requires farmers to have greater access to digital data and technologies to extract information from data. The agricultural landscape will rapidly change due to low-cost and portable ICT infrastructure.

Agri-intelligence is the integrated collection of tools and techniques – from robots, unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) and sensor networks to sophisticated mathematical models and algorithms – that can help farmers make sense of large amounts of data (agronomic, environmental and economic) to make risk-informed decisions and run their farms more profitably and sustainably.

Perez AgriIntelligence

The figure below shows the ubiquitous emerging vision of a farm in the second machine age, where computer systems are used to augment human perception and capacity for decision making in complex situations.

PerezAgriIntelligentFarmSystem

The farming enterprise is considered a system that interacts with the environment (through climate, markets, value chain, etc.) The key objective is to make sound decisions about management in order to optimise inputs, yield, quality, and at the same time make the system robust against yield and quality volatility due to climate, commodity market fluctuations, and incomplete information about the state of crop, soil, weeds and pests.

Agronomy, LandWISE 2015, Nutrients, Precision Agriculture, Soil

Fertiliser Ballistics: must know facts

May 24, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

LandWISE 2015 Presenter, Miles Grafton

crops and pastures since upgrading to spreaders capable of spreading at increased, bout or swath widths. This issue is more prevalent where fertilizer blends of products with dissimilar ballistic properties are sown simultaneously.

The problem is more obvious when applicators have purchased modern top of the range twin disc spreaders with the ability to spread at an acceptable spread pattern at tram lines at or greater than 30 m. These spreaders have increased tram or bout widths of spread from 20 – 24 m, to greater than 30 m thus reducing the number of tram lines, increasing output and reducing trafficking of the crop or pasture.

Spreading at a tram line of 30 m requires a total spread pattern to be around 45 m, allowing for a pattern overlap of around 50%, to achieve the desired accuracy (Chok et al., 2014). Given that the spreading discs are around 0.5 – 1.5 m above ground level, then fertilizer particles must be discharged at some considerable speed.

GraftonTable1 — Table 1: Distances typical fertiliser particles will travel when ejected at various speeds, in a horizontal plane from 1.5 metre height. (SSP is single superphosphate at 3 different sizes, KCl is potash, MAP is mono-ammonium phosphate, DAP di-ammonium phosphate). The distances are lateral from each disk; total spreading distance is twice that in Table 1.

In order to achieve an optimal even distribution, spreaders deliver 50% of the required amount of fertilizer on each side, which is overlapped with another 50% when the vehicle makes the next run in the opposite direction, or an adjacent run in a round and round spreading pattern. Therefore, the area closest to the border of the distribution area only receives half of the recommended rate as there is no pattern overlap and the desired fertilizer response, would then be reduced as if 50% of the desired rate on average has been applied.

Border spreading refers to the capacity to reduce the application distance on the side towards the border in order to minimize the amount of fertilizer applied outside the zone. Yield spreading compensates for the need to overlap by doubling the amount of fertilizer applied in the boundary side.

Product separation can be avoided by soil testing early, then addressing fertility issues by direct drilling or broadcast application prior to the crop establishing. Then use tram line application on crops for the one product intended to be side dressed during the crop life cycle.

Agronomy, Controlled Traffic Systems, LandWISE 2015, LandWISE People, Nutrients, Precision Agriculture, Projects

Testing On-Farm Fertiliser Spreading

May 24, 2015 LandWISE Admin Leave a comment

LandWISE 2015 Presenter, Dan Bloomer

DanBloomer200 — Dan is the Manager of LandWISE Inc, an independent consultant, and a member of the Precision Agriculture Association of New Zealand Executive.

The SFF “On-Farm Fertiliser Applicator Calibration” project arose from repeated requests by farmers for a quick and simple way to check performance of fertiliser spreading by themselves or contractors. They wanted to know that spreading was acceptable.

A calibration check includes assessment and correcting of both application rate (kg/ha) and uniformity (CV). Farmers indicate determining the rate is reasonably easy and commonly done. Very few report completing any form of uniformity assessment.

There are many protocols internationally relating to the spreading of fertiliser products. Lawrence (2007) compared six test methods.

1400 tray matrix used to collect 18 simultaneous transverse tests on a Transpread “W” twin chain spreader From Lawrence, 2006 — 1400 tray matrix used to collect 18 simultaneous transverse tests on a Transpread “W” twin chain spreader, From Lawrence, 2006

Most used 0.5 m trays organised in a single transverse row to capture the spread pattern of the spreader. No account is taken of the longitudinal variation between individual rows when multiple tests are carried out.

Larwnce Comparisons

The results of the test are given as the bout width where the coefficient of variation (CV) does not exceed a specified level. In all cases the maximum allowable CV is 15% for nitrogenous fertilisers and 25% for low analysis fertilisers.

An On-Farm Protocol

There is no set method dor assessing uniformity. On-farm testing could use a set number of collectors per swath (spacing changes with swath width) or a set spacing between containers (container number varies with swath width). Farmers can decide.

There are however some important principles:

Uniformity requires collection of samples from a spreading event and calculation of a uniformity value.
Set equipment up correctly according to manufacturer’s instructions
Ensure the spreader is horizontal, and at the correct height off the ground
Use standard test trays, given the need for baffling to stop fertiliser bouncing out
Ensure the spreader is driven well past the trays to capture all fertiliser
If a larger sample is wanted, two or more runs at the chosen application rate should be made rather than applying a higher rate.

FertSetUp — Set equipment up correctly according to manufacturer’s instructions

FertTrays — A line of trays laid out across the full width of spread to catch fertiliser. Use standard test trays, given the need for baffling to stop fertiliser bouncing out

An alternative is to assess the volume of fertiliser captured in each tray. Disposable syringe bodies make good measuring cylinders.

FertTestRack — Disposable syringe bodies make good measuring cylinders

Determining a field uniformity will involve either physical or theoretical over-lapping of adjacent swaths.

FertOverlap — Determining a field uniformity will involve either physical or theoretical over-lapping of adjacent swaths

On-line software is being developed to process data and generate statistical reports. Key outputs will be measured application rate, the CV at the specified bout width and the bout width range at which CV is within accepted limits.

Test spread-pattern checks performed to date show there is a need for wider testing by farmers. Unacceptable CVs and incorrect application rates are not unusual.

There remains some question about the percentage of fertiliser caught in some types of tray

The SFF project is co-funded by the Foundation for Arable Research and the Fertiliser Association

FertResearch

FAR