Growers discuss digital technologies they use on the farm, and why

After nearly 30 years of development, expansion and experience, the search for the best precision ag tool has yielded one familiar conclusion: there is no silver bullet to attain profitability.

It all depends on the farm operation, the equipment and the willingness of the producer to make everything work.

That was the overriding message from a panel discussion on farm digital strategy at the Ontario Agricultural Conference last month at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus. Three growers provided insights on the technologies they use, along with brief explanations about their choices.

This is a summary of their presentations.

Sam Snobelen, Ripley

In southern Bruce and northern Huron counties, Snobelen’s operation primarily comprises family-owned land where they grow IP soybeans for export, traited soybeans for seed production, grain corn for all uses, and winter wheat with a few acres of winter barley. They also grow hay for a purebred Charolais cow-calf operation.

“Basically, all of our seeding, application, tillage and harvesting equipment is wirelessly data-capable, so I have maps of every application, every pass through every field, every year, if everything works right,” said Snobelen.

“We do a lot of variable rate, a lot of trials between varieties and fertility, so there were about 110 different trials that have to be analyzed from 2023.”

Many of his trials blended variable-rate planting and fungicide applications with overhead imagery to indicate crop health, injury and impact on yield.

Snobelen displayed a slide of the results from one fungicide trial, which first showed the application pattern, then a normalized difference vegetation index image indicating the location of white mould in the field, and ultimately the effect on yield.

“It was one of the neatest yield maps I’ve had,” said Snobelen. “You didn’t need to calculate the difference. You knew that there was some sort of benefit there and was showing about a four bushel increase on that fungicide.”

He’s also tried growing variable-rate wheat as a means of avoiding lush growth. Using either an app on his phone or his as-applied map, he gauged the progress of two populations in a field –one with 1.9 million seeds per acre on poorer zones and another with 1.1 million in higher-producing zones.

Josh Boersen, Sebringville

A third generation producer, Boersen and his family work a livestock and grain operation north of Stratford. He runs with a full line-up of digital tools that are less brand-specific, allowing him to integrate more off-brand equipment.

“We’re not particularly married to a brand. We’re looking to use the tools that work the best for us on our farm,” he said, noting Climate FieldView and AgLeader SMS are two of the systems.

“The reason I need to use AgLeader SMS is because of that broad-ranging group of equipment we use but also in certain situations with script or soil data management.”

They use HarvestProfit, which is important for Boersen because it’s cloud-based and allows him to track all farm productivity and profit scenarios on a field-by-field basis. He can also do inventory and contract management for all crops.

SoilOptics and Ontario AgMaps from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs are two other platforms he uses. The latter is a public platform that helps with barn planning or nutrient management plans. He also uses free Google Suite to share documents with others on the farm.

Boersen said they entered the digital landscape in 2016-17 when a drone image of the home farm indicated compaction might be an issue. There were, on average, three cultivator passes, sprayer passes, planter and drag-hose manure application passes per year. He realized they needed to manage better.

“You can’t really see a difference in the crop looking at it visually but it took that drone image to shock us into seeing all the impacts of every pass we had on the field. A digital tool used correctly at the right time and in the right weather conditions provided us with some really valuable insight.”

Evert Veldhuizen, Woodstock

When his parents started farming in 1996, they moved from a mixed operation to dairy. Since Veldhuizen assumed control of the farm, he’s returned to a diverse mix with swine and ducks added to the dairy component.

They also provide soil sampling, planting and custom work, operate DeKalb and Quality Seed dealerships, and sell cover crop seed.

With digital technologies, Veldhuizen said he’d always wanted just one program but today, his line-up is as diverse as the farm. Climate FieldView, John Deere Op Center, FarmQA (their scouting map), and Flowfinity (for work orders) are a few of their digital platforms.

They also use SIS –Soil Information Systems –for soil sampling, AgLeader SMS for data management and Google Sheets for crop planning.

“We use 2020 Gen II, Gen III, Vsets, DeltaForce and Smart Firmers on our planters and 2630, 4240 and 4640 screens and lots of iPads,” he said, adding it’s a challenge to ensure they’re up to date.

“All of our RTK is John Deere and Fendt, and we have implement steer on the corn planter and on our strip till. We started with a simple yield monitor and needed to do more with that data than we were, and in some ways, we needed more data to drive decisions. That’s when we hired more staff to interpret it and do something with it.”

The key goal with reading maps or developing crop plans is to increase profitability, noted Veldhuizen, echoing his fellow panelists.