Opening of the 2015 Precision Agriculture Conference

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Comment by OntAG Admin on February 27, 2015 at 6:29am

The conference’s opening panel consisted of Steve Redmond, David Scott, and Steve Denys.

Steve Redmond, a precision ag specialist with Hensall District Co-operative started off the panel presentation by discussing five things farmers learned in 2014.

1.    Precision ag is spatial management – Every field is different so there’s no need to try and average the results for an entire field to see if it works on your farm.
2.    Farmers need to build a precision ag team – The team should consist of people steeped in agronomy so the farmer is receiving the best guidance when they ask for it.
3.    NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) maps are useful – Sensors like GreenSeeker map crop vegetation and are highly correlated to final yields
4.    Plants do not lie – Yield monitors can have errors due to various factors, but getting dirty and looking at the plants will tell you the truth about what’s actually going on.
5.    Do not give up on yield monitors – Processing is becoming more automatic and everything is relevant so farmers need their yield monitors and data to validate what they’re doing.