BY BENJAMIN ALLEN
TECH
@WORK
Paying forpictures
FOR MANY FARMERS, THE IDEA OF
paying money for pictures of their fields
seems a bit, well, crazy. If you can walk
a field and see a problem, why would you
pay money for a picture of that problem?
What’s the point?
The point is time. As the old saying
goes, time is money. Expressed as an equa-
tion, time = money.
Walking fields, or even driving by fields,
on a regular basis takes a lot of time. The
more acres you handle, the more time
these field checks take up. At a certain
threshold—generally understood to be
5,000 acres—there just isn’t enough time
to look at the fields often enough. So pic-
tures save time, which saves money.
Pictures of fields also give you a bird’s-
eye view, allowing you to quickly look
at an entire field. This eliminates the
problem of missing trouble spots that can’t
be seen from the road. This is especially
valuable with bigger fields, as farmers just
don’t have the time to walk the entire field
with any regularity.
But it’s not just about time, it’s also
about protecting yield. Advanced imagery
for agriculture can also give us pictures
that show more than the human eye
can see. For example, Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
images can show us the variation in
plant health far beyond what we can see
without a photographic lens. The human
eye looks at a field and tends to see green
plants, only picking up on big differences,
such as a big patch of yellow plants or a
drowned-out area of a field. But NDVI
images show us much more detail on the
health of the plants, allowing us to focus
our problem-solving efforts on specific ar-
eas of the field that may not yet be show-
ing yellowing or dying plants. Stepping
in to mitigate these problems before they
become visible to the naked eye gives us a
better chance to limit yield losses.
So if pictures of our fields can save us
time spent scouting, then we are saving
money with their use. Further, if ad-
vanced pictures can help us address crop
issues before our eyes can see them, then
we can save bushels by intervening while
there is still time. Saving bushels = saving
money.
The trick is to make sure that any im-
ages you buy for your farm are timely. In
Canada, that means the months of May,
June and July are the prime window of op-
portunity to identify any crop issues while
there is still time to address them. Also,
make sure the images you pay for allow
you to make decisions. Cool pictures aren’t
enough. You need to be able to make a
decision when you look at the image, and
you need to be able to make that decision
quickly. If you aren’t sure how an image
would drive you to act on a problem, then
don’t pay for it.
A good example of in-season problem
solving involves fungicide use. In many
cases, yield loss due to fungus problems
is already determined by the time you
can see indicators with the human eye.
In these cases, NDVI imagery can help
farmers make spray/no-spray decisions
with a much higher level of confidence
days before these problems become costly.
Fungicide use saves yield, and the decision
of whether or not to use it is a difficult
one. But advanced imagery solutions take
the decision out of the realm of specula-
tion and place it firmly into the realm of
quantifiable data.
So go ahead and buy imagery—just
make sure you buy imagery that drives
actions. Pictures save time. The right pic-
tures save yield. Both save money.
Benjamin Allen serves as the Chief revenue
officer for Agri-Trend® and Agri-Data® where
he focuses on helping customers use technol-
ogy to produce safe food profitably.
Advanced imagery for agriculture
can also give you pictures that show
more than the human eye can see.
Winter
2016
grainswest.com
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