Technology Driven Research

Above: Jeff Jorgenson, ISA President-Elect

ISA’s Research Center for Farming Innovation develops and tests tools

BY BETHANY BARATTA

Farmers rely on technology and research to be productive and profitable. Today, drones and satellites are giving farmers an unprecedented overview of crop health while ground-level sensors provide realtime data on the soil and climate. The Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) Research Center for Farming Innovation is creating and testing various tools to assist farmers in making well-informed decisions on everything from drainage management to conservation implementation.

ISA President-Elect Jeff Jorgenson says investing checkoff dollars into testing of various tools makes a difference for farmers.

“Finding tools that will work to make the operation more profitable and better for the environment is often time-consuming and expensive,” says Jorgenson, who farms near Sidney. “Having ISA engaged in developing and testing those tools helps find things that can work for your operation.”

Here’s a snapshot of a few tools ISA Research is using and testing.

Eyes in the Furrow

SMARTFIRMER TOOL

Soil carbon or organic matter is a key factor in crop productivity. But capturing enough measurements of soil carbon to make meaningful decision zones for variable rate applications has been difficult and expensive.

Technology is evolving to help researchers and agronomists gather more information about soil organic matter. Tools like Precision Planting’s SmartFirmer and Optic Mapper from Veris could make soil carbon measurements easier and more cost effective. If proven successful through various ISA Rsearch trials, the tool could save money in seed and fertilizer costs.

How it works

Photo-optic sensors ride along the soil on a planter or cart and take recordings every several seconds. The sensors pick up the color of the soil, which is related to the organic matter within the soil.

The ideasis that the tool would provide improved decision zones for variable rate technology.

ISA Director of Agronomy Scott Nelson says this photo-optic sensing is new technology, but we are just now beginning to figure out what insight the data provides and how to use this sensing in a practical way. “We think good, dense reads of soil carbon could improve our decision zones for prescriptions,” he says. The SmartFirmer tool measures temperature, moisture, soil carbon and residue in the seed furrow.

Precision Planting says farmers set up a rate for a given range of organic matter, and as the sensors identify different soil carbon levels in the field, it will prompt the planter to change rates automatically. The ISA research team is using the soil carbon sensor technology in its field trials to test its accuracy.

If the technology shows promise, it could have real benefits to farmers, Nelson says.

“If you get your prescriptions right, it can be $25 an acre in savings or a yield increase,” he says. “But the problem is we don’t always get the prescriptions right because we don’t have good quality data.”

Nelson says the ISA Research team is looking for farmers to test the soil sensor technology in their fields.

For more information on the SmartFirmer tool, contact Nelson at snelson@iasoybeans.com or 515-334-1055.

Sizing Up the Watershed

AGRICULTURAL CONSERVATION PLANNING FRAMEWORK SITING TOOL

Technology is helping conservationists and planners streamline data to help farmers make decisions about potential conservation practices.

The ISA Research team uses the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) siting tool as part of its farmerfocused approach to watershed planning and implementation.

“The ACPF tool allows planners and partners to take a look at a watershed’s combination of land use, soils and terrain to characterize watersheds and their capacity for potential adoption of a suite of conservation practices,” says ISA Senior Conservationist Karl Gesch.

The ISA Research team facilitates discussions with farmers and landowners to determine the goals within the watershed. Team members have a knowledge of conservation practices and understand the goals outlined in the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. But additional analysis is necessary to determine where a specific conservation practice could be implemented. That’s where the siting tool comes into play. “ACPF adds scientific rigor to the outcomes generated in the watershed planning process,” Gesch says.

How it works

Using GIS (Geographic Information System) and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data, the tool provides spatial information on soils, land use and topography. Combined with knowledge of conservation effectiveness, the tool maps out where a potential conservation practice can be placed on the landscape. Watershed planners then take this information to farmers/ landowners to discuss the opportunities within the watershed and on the farm. “It adds geographic robustness to the watershed plan,” Gesch says. “This tool allows us to complete a comprehensive analysis of the entire watershed to identify where practices could be installed and what the capacity is for adoption in the watershed,” Gesch says.

He points out that the tool doesn’t replace the work of watershed planners. Instead, he says it saves both planners and farmers/landowners time assessing potential locations for conservation practices. The ISA Research team has utilized the ACPF tool in 20 watershed plans completed within the last few years. The framework is now a standard tool used in watershed planning services that ISA provides.

For more information about the ACPF tool, contact Gesch at kgesch@iasoybeans.com or 515-334-1047.

Field Imagery

VEGETATION INDEX TIME SERIES IMAGERY TOOL

Digital imagery is useful in crop production for a variety of purposes. Currently, most farmers use digital imagery primarily for pest, weed and disease detection, equipment problems or other crop scouting practices where a snapshot is all that's needed. To meaningfully study crop canopy throughout a single growing season, or between years or between fields, digital imagery requires calibration.

“Unlike measuring temperature or yield - both of which have specific units of measurement - the raw, digital data of imagery do not have a universal scale system,” says ISA Director of Analytics Peter Kyveryga, Ph.D.

This is problematic when using reflectance of crop canopy to compare one crop year to another, as it’s not an equal comparison.

“If your scale is off, it’s difficult to accurately assess your field or develop a plan,” Kyveryga says. Since 2015, ISA has partnered with two Story County farmers and used their 200-acre site near Collins to test imagery from 15 providers for visual quality, current calibration quality, registration/spatial location accuracy and imagery processing quality to determine its potential to produce calibrated vegetation indices of crop canopy.

Calibration tarps with known percentage reflectance values were arranged prior to image collection to calibrate imagery taken. The team collected images at the site every two weeks during the growing seasons from 2015 to 2019.

Features

Developed by the ISA analytics team, a webbased “Vegetation Index Time Series Imagery Tool” (VITSIT) was created to:

• Communicate the differences between uncalibrated and calibrated imagery sources;

• Report time series of different vegetation indices of crop canopy to identify within-field yield corn and soybean variability zones;

• Identify whether temporal patterns for different vegetation indices change during and across growing seasons;

• Report correlation between yield and vegetation indices from the beginning to the end of the growing season; and

• Identify how rainfall changes imagery calibration quality and correlation with yield.

How it’s used

Users can select a crop and a field to produce time series graphs of different vegetation indices. For example, the tool shows the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), a graphical indicator used to analyze remote sensing measurements and assess whether or not the target being observed contains live green vegetation.

One recent example shows the greatest separation of yield zones from NDVI of soybean canopy was in early season, mid-June, which is often difficult to see visually on the ground.

The tool can also help visualize the average time series for a previous growing season with the same crop. This feature allows tracking of soybean canopy development over time and better and more accurately predicts yield zones or potential soybean stresses.

The team is currently working to learn if early season calibrated imagery can be used for prediction of crop yield and seed quality.

For more information about the VITSIT tool, contact Kyveryga at pkyveryga@iasoybeans.com or go to iasoybeans.com/programs/isa-research/tools-services.

Transforming Drainage

EVALUATING DRAINAGE WATER RECYCLING DECISIONS TOOL

Technology is transforming the way drainage contractors and conservation planners think about water storage and the ability to reuse stored water back on the land.

A new tool, called Evaluating Drainage Water Recycling Decisions (EDWRD), helps assess the multiple benefits of drainage water storage and reuse for farmers and downstream partners.

The ISA Research team is using the EDWRD tool to help farmers estimate the potential benefits that result from capturing drained agricultural water in various sizes of water storage (e.g. pond or reservoir) for reuse as irrigation, a practiced referred to as drainage water recycling.

“It’s a combination of multiple win-wins,” says Chris Hay, Ph.D., the senior manager for production systems innovation at ISA. “It’s a practice where we have both an agronomic and downstream water quality benefit. This practice not only addresses both nitrogen and phosphorous capture, it helps provide good drainage while also addressing watershort conditions as well.”

The ISA Research team is putting the tool and the drainage water recycling practice on trial through pilot projects in the state.

Pilot project

Using the tool, Hay worked with A.J. and Kellie Blair near Dayton to determine how their farm could benefit from drainage water recycling. Using field and soils information, the model helped determine how large of a pond would make the most sense on their farm.

In the project, which is slated to begin this year, the Blairs will transform a 3-acre piece of their land into a holding pond. The excess water captured in the pond will then be used in a pivot irrigation system during drier parts of the growing season. “As a farmer you’re always cussing the weather because it’s never right,” AJ says. “I always thought that we didn’t need irrigation, but it would sure be cool to have water at the right time.”

This project helps do just that.

“We don’t need 20 inches of water to irrigate with, but 2 inches at pollination could be huge for us,” A.J. says. “It has the potential to increase yield by putting the right amount of water on at the right time through irrigation, while also taking some nitrogen out of the water, cleaning it up and returning it back on to the field.”

To learn more about the EDWRD tool, contact Hay at chay@iasoybeans.com or 515-334-1068.

AJ Blair

Matt Lechtenberg

AJ Blair, Matt Lechtenberg and others discuss a drainage project at Blair’s farm near Dayton.

Contact Bethany Baratta at bbaratta@iasoybeans.com.