Hello everyone, this is my first posting to the site. I'm an ex-pat Brit living in Canada for the past 2 years, where I've established a sucessful business providing precision agriculture consulting services to grain farmers. The concept of 'Variable Rate' applications is becoming big over here, particularly the use of yield, soil, and satellite maps to identify variability within fields and tread these areas as seperate management zones for fertilitity and chemical applications. This year I'd say I had some influence on 300,000+ acres in western Canada, and will be looking to expand this further next year.

I am curious where the UK grain farming industry is in this regard, partly because my accent means I'm often asked this by Canadian farmers, and partly because I'd love to be able to come home to the UK to work at least part of the year to set up a similar business. Specifically, are UK farmers employing such management practices, and is the equipment and data supply (yield monitors/variable rate controllers/in-season satellite imagery/etc) in everyday use? Here in North America it would be hard to find a piece of equipment not set-up for mapping and variable rate applications.

Any information would be of great interest, and I may be a good source of information and contacts for anyone considering coming to farm/work in Canada.

Regards,

Simon

There are some great toys over here in everyday use.

However on our farm they are not used. I have GPS but it is really only for cultivation work. I can perfectly well adjuct the drill seed rates in the cab by turning a dial in the bits of field I know need more seed. Same with fert - although I could spend money for high-tech variable rates, I can do almost the same using my eyes and the gears.

I look with some scepticism at the latest offerings which proport to vary the N rates using a sensor to see how green the crop is. Crop looks more of less green to me if it rains, or which way I look at it.

I expect variable P&K to be on farm soon, but even then thats becuase new fert spinners that dont need calibrating are comming with it as standard. We are replacing bagged P&K with more bulky, contractor applied stuff so I doubt it wil get used.

One thing I will be using is some kind of ground radar - a-la Time Team - but not for its true job of locating compaction, but to find field drains that are blocked, and old bits of WW2 runwau to dig up.

Yield mapping is common on many combines, but on our smaller fields they really just end up showing you where the headlands are, where old hedges were, or where the low points of the field are. Bit of field walking and some eyes are more use.

On the other hand, I would be interested in a PM with some info about my moving to Canada.

Thanks for that insight, kind of what I expected. I guess the larger farms here may be better suited to the technology (if a farmer has 1000 acres of a 5000 acre farm that aren't as productive it doesn't make sense to apply as much fert there, and if he's using a hired man who doesn't know the fields there is little chance he'd be able to flick the dials). Having said that I have worked with some small fields, particularly potato and other vegetables, where they take soil samples on each acre and adjust the fertilizer & nutrient inputs accordingly - the yield benefits outweigh the $200/acre cost of soil testing.

I'm kind of with you on the green sensors, although we've proven the value in using similar systems to vary fungicide applications on canola (rape seed), but again you need lots of acres to really justify it.Drainage is a huge issue where I live, and a good part of my autumn has been spent surveying fields with RTK GPS to design drainage improvements.

If yield mapping is showing headlands and low spots then the yield data probably needs cleaning up (i.e. deleting the points around the headlands), this will then start to show more variation within the field that can lead you to areas of different pH, nutrient deficiencies, salinity etc. Again field size here is prohibitive to walking around as some guys are farming 600-1000 acre fields!

I was at a conference last week where I met some Australians who talked about 'Control Traffic Farming' - Google it, very interesting and they swear by it!

Send me a PM if you have questions specific to moving to Canada.

CTF = way to sell more GPS! Its fairly logical to tred gently and spread weight and CTF is just taking it to the next step. Trick is doing it wit existing machinery and not going and spending 80k on a new drill.

Could be the odd issue with veg/beet and automatic weeding - apparently it disturbs nests, whereas blanket spraying is better for ground nesting animals ;)

There has definately been more interest in P&K soil testing since fert prices rocketed.I think a lot of lime is applied after GPS testing.I'm starting to take tentative steps down this route,but feel I need to improve my practise of the "art of agriculture" before getting anymore envagled in the "science of agriculture".I've seen some large scale growers spending a fortune on GPS set ups and then sowing when the ground isnt "fit".

 We use the lot - variably apply lime, p & k and nitrogen. Also auto steer, yield map, auto boom shut off etc.

 Does it pay? 

 I couldn't possibly give you any hard core facts that it does but I have a gut feeling it does because we use less p & k for starters only putting it where it needs to go. Yield maps do work because they highlight correctly what we already knew. Auto boom shut off is good but a split second to late turning on and you get a line of grass weeds so its only as good as the gps signal its receiving. Auto steer is excellent and definitely does increase work rates over a long day, but again its down to quality of signal.

One thing I dont think works is variable nitrogen purely because you need to test the leaf not look at it to get an accurate idea whilst also testing the soil for n levels as well. I now do deep N tests and tissue tests and then work out a blanket rate. Last year I saved 75kg/ha of N on my wheats doing this which effectively saved me £75/ha as N was £1/kg. Whether I will be able to do the same this yield I have no idea yet.