Omnia and Fieldview collaboration to enhance farm data use
Digital data transfer, sharing and analysis for arable growers is set to become faster and more efficient via a new partnership between two major agronomy firms.
Users of Hutchinsons’ Omnia and Bayer’s FieldView will be able to seamlessly synchronise their data between the two platforms, following a collaboration that will offer growers greater knowledge to improve farm management decisions.
By combining Omnia’s precision agronomy features with FieldView’s data analysis capabilities, farmers are able to get more from their data. This will not only improve crop management for optimal returns, but also help shape farm strategy for a more sustainable business.
Omnia app © Hutchinsons
See also: How a Cornish grower keeps wheat diseases at bay
Seamless data transfer
Many growers cite the lack of communication between precision platforms as a major drawback to accessing their data, with challenges often associated with different yield file formats and field names.
Once the link between the two platforms is in place, real-time yield data captured in FieldView will import automatically into Omnia, without the need of portable storage devices.
Field boundaries will also be synchronised, eliminating the inconvenience of dealing with various file types or duplicated data entry.
From June, Omnia users have been able to trial the new integration platform, allowing enough time to familiarise themselves with the system ahead of this year’s harvest.
Oliver Wood, Hutchinsons’ precision technology manager, believes the shared data will help growers optimise decision- making.
“Cloud-syncing Omnia and FieldView data will help growers visualise and analyse data more effectively, giving new insights on crop management strategies and operation effectiveness. This will help growers improve poor performing field areas, or identify alternative uses,” he says.
Max Dafforn, Bayer’s field product specialist for FieldView, adds that the merger will further the analysis of variable rate applications.
“Effectively, users will have streamlined data collection and the ability to overlay yield data with variable rate application information quickly and accurately,” he says.
“Farmers will be able to utilise their data to generate cost of production maps within Omnia and make better farm management decisions.”
FieldView app © Bayer
Case Study: GH Hoyles, Long Sutton, Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire farmer and contractor GH Hoyles is one enterprise already benefiting from both platforms.
The farm grows wheat, potatoes, sugar beat, vining peas, mustard and beetroot across 700ha of Wisbech series Grade 1 silt soils.
The business an early adopter of the Omnia platform, which saw the entire farm mapped, including non-cropped areas. Last season saw the first time the farm used Climate FieldView.
Henry Richardson, assistant farm manager, believes the collaboration between the two systems offers continuous connectivity which will speed up the evaluation of variable rate applications.
“Simplified data sharing between Omnia and FieldView will allow us to evaluate any field area efficiently and accurately,” he says.
Data transfer between the systems will make life much easier, when used across variable rate seed applications, fertiliser plans, and mapping potato cyst nematode areas.
“I used to have to go to the combine with a memory stick and manually download the data, and if field names were slightly different an extra file name would be created,” he adds.
Now the farm’s data will be in one central place, Mr Richardson hopes the previous time and labour spent inputting and sorting through data can be better spent to improve farm decisions.
The cloud setup also means all farmworkers can access the information, creating the opportunity for more remote decision-making.
Further integrated functionality is planned for the future. This will increase access within the two platforms extending the benefits across the farm and adding additional field insight to refine crop management.
