Yield Analysis in FieldView: A Powerful Decision-Making Platform for Agriculture Professionals
As the planting season is around the corner, this period of the year is a valuable time for farmers to strategically plan the start of the operations to get the maximum of their yields. Precision agriculture is a valuable asset already tackled by thousands of farmers worldwide. Bayer's Digital Farming Solutions, software platform, FieldView, an industry-leading digital farming platform, currently used on more than 75 million hectares globally.
First launched in the United States in 2015 and launched commercially in South Africa in 2021, FieldView is considered to be the most broadly connected platform in the industry. It gives farmers a deeper understanding of their fields so they can make more informed operating decisions to optimise yields, maximise efficiency and reduce risk. What farmers seed now, they harvest later; all of them are waiting for great results that turn to be great profits at the end of the season. This can be obtained by overcoming the challenges related to crop evolution with feasible solutions and informed decisions, which minimise overall risks.
Putting data science to work on the farm happened before the digital era as well, but nowadays, with precision farming equipment and digital tools like FieldView, agriculture professionals can farm meter by meter and apply inputs like seeds, fertilisers, crop protection and water only where and when they are most needed.
The most important feature that FieldView provides for agriculture professionals is seeing their fields from every angle. By using side-by-side maps, they can compare critical data layers in field, including yield, soil maps, application rate, seed population rate and more.
Yield analysis is one of the most important factors in agriculture-related decision-making process. All agronomic practices impact yield in different ways; the goal is to avoid the practices that lead to loss and adopt the practices that lead to success. The Yield Analysis tool in FieldView offers analyse performance by hybrid, soil type, or by customized regions, to make the best agronomic decisions year-round. FieldView creates data layers to identify and save field regions for deeper analysis. The farmer can then measure the impact of his agronomic decisions on yield in each region after harvest.
Across hundreds or even thousands of hectares, it’s easy to get lost in this sea of data points. It’s simply too much for one person to calculate manually. That’s what makes a digital tool a powerful ally. It is every farmer’s dream to have an inexhaustible resource which provides the right data, it never puts a decimal in the wrong place. The Yield Analysis tool in FieldView can uncover trends in your harvest data that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.
Yield is influenced by a host of factors beyond genetics, like soil composition and organic matter, water availability, weather, fertility and crop protection application, crop rotation, tillage, use of cover crops, planting downforce, etc. The Yield Analysis tool in FieldView makes it easier to turn every field into a test plot. With just the touch of a finger, you can easily compare plots and see which hybrid or variety won. Even when you’re testing a dozen different seeds, yield analysis will always show the winner. Split-planting trials will provide you with data that will help you compare the performance of different hybrids, varying population rates, and understand the variability across your fields.
That hybrid which worked well once is possible not to give the best results after some time. FieldView can easily provide a list of average yield for each of hybrids used on a farm and a review of the results over the past few seasons. This way, the farmer can evaluate all the tendencies and ensure he is making the best decision possible.
Yield Analysis is a valuable help to sort out between two or more different types of hybrids. At the first glance, there might not be any significant differences, but going deep on the yield data, one can find those slight changes that can make a big difference, without turning from farmer into statistician. You can make a yield analysis by operation or by field and easily share the results with business partners or seed dealers to consult them in what’s next for your farm. Instead of losing oneself in endless excel sheets you can easily share the analysis by mail, visuals included.
The information & conclusions resulted from yield analysis is a most useful tool for the next season’s seed prescription. What you seed, you harvest. After looking at how different varieties performed at different populations, it is easy to take the next step and write variable rate seeding prescriptions using the FieldView advanced seed prescription tool, Seed Scripts.
When evaluating your yield, your analysis is only as accurate as your field data. With FieldView, double checking data is easy using the data “fix-it” tool. You can delete if needed and edit your data, including crop type, hybrid or variety name, treatments, applications, and prescriptions. Even if it seems a lot of data to deal with, batch edits make the process a lot simpler than it looks: you can change different sets of data at once and avoid going through every field one by one.
To sum it up, arming yourself with the best data specific to your operation and putting it to use with a platform such as FieldView can help you get the most from your seed investments each year.
