Variable rate planting: how can I use it? What benefits will it have to my operation? How do I write a seed prescription?
We all have those “tough” spots and the “good” spots on each farm so why not treat those areas a little differently? We understand that we don’t want to plant as many plants per acre in a sand pocket as we would in good black dirt. Being able to peel back or increase population on the fly is a huge time saver that increases efficiency in the field. How does it benefit my operation? This one can be a little tricky to measure. Will you decrease seed costs? Maybe, depends on how you increase or decrease population through the whole field. Will it increase yield per acre? Maybe? The important thing to measure here is efficiency of your input costs. Did I get the same yield with less inputs? If the answer is yes, and you saw a better ROI on your inputs, then taking time to write a prescription was well worth your time.
How do I write my planting prescriptions? There are many platforms today that will assist you in writing your prescriptions, but we are going to use AgFiniti to do it. Agfiniti makes it very simple to do once you have an account set up and purchase an essentials license. Once you map out your fields and set up field boundaries you can choose to write legend-based equations or use university-based equations. If you use university-based equations, you simply just make a few guided clicks and you are good to go. If you want to make your own planting zones you can do it that way as well with legend-based equations. Downloading your data is very simple also. You can download data to a USB or if you have Wi-Fi or cell signal in the cab you can link your InCommand or Integra to your Agfiniti account and download it directly to your monitor.
Call us at 712-794-7992 and we can assist you with getting an AgFiniti account set up and writing your planting recommendations.