Ag Tech Sunday - Digital technologies to improve fertiliser decisions

This article is bought to you by Wallaloo Park.

By Darren Hughes - CEO and Co-founder at Laconik

“Any new digital technology developed to improve fertiliser decisions must be validated and demonstrate a clear value proposition”

This is the key finding from my recent two week visit to the USA that was financially supported by the Western Australian State Government.

In the first two weeks of December I travelled across the US and had in-depth discussions with growers, agronomists, researchers, multinationals, start-ups, start-up incubators and government departments with the objectives of;

1.     understanding how American farmers are using digital technology.

2.     review the production, environmental and economic benefits farmers are getting from digital technologies.

3.     assess the potential of new digital technologies being used by American farmers to be adopted by farmers in Western Australia.

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I present a few key findings below.

One key difference between growers in the US and Australia is the higher adoption of variable rate (VR) fertiliser technology. The level of adoption varies widely depending on who you speak to and the environment in which they farm or consult, but there seems to be a general consensus that 60% of fertiliser (range 15-90%) is applied using VR in the US and it is being used to apply P and K fertilisers. The adoption of VR for N fertiliser is much lower. When I explored the reason why, people commented that making N fertiliser decisions is complex and difficult and this has resulted in lower adoption. By comparison, according to the GRDC Farm Practices Survey from 2016 (most recent data I could find), only 7.4% of growers in Australia were applying their fertilisers using VR. Based on feedback from the people I spoke to the adoption of VR is only going to increase in the US. A question remains as to why there is such a large difference in the level of adoption between the US and Australia.

With paddocks >400 hectares (1000 acres) not uncommon in Australia I was keen to identify new techniques growers and agronomists in the US are using to understand spatial distribution of nutrients. The US has adopted a grid method to take soil samples, sampling every hectare (ha) (2.5 acres). When I spoke to growers and agronomists in North Dakota and western Kansas, they acknowledged this method works well in smaller paddocks (<50 ha) but was unpractical due to the logistics of taking many samples and the high cost have having many samples analysed, in large paddocks (>200 ha). In these paddocks, growers and agronomists have adopted a soil sampling strategy based on management zones, however, they also acknowledged the limitations of this strategy in gaining a complete understanding of the spatial variability of nutrients. As paddocks become larger in the search for ever greater efficiencies, understanding the spatial distribution of nutrients is going to continue to become a problem. Perhaps the use of digital technologies, combined with new statistical methods will allow growers and agronomists in both Australia and the US to better understand the spatial distribution of nutrients and ultimately make better fertiliser recommendations.

The trend is clear, digital agriculture is on its way to a farm near you and if its impact is anything like it has had in other industries, we are in for an exciting time. Not only is it the new technologies that will be developed but it is also the new business models that will be developed which have the potential to change agriculture as a know it. I attended a presentation from Bayer in Fargo, North Dakota and their strategy is clear - seeds, pesticides and digital. Bayer have already started rolling out an outcomes-based pricing model in Iowa.

Most of the people I spoke to see the potential of digital agriculture and the use of ‘data’ to improve decisions. As one agronomist from Kansas said, “the numbers don’t lie”. However, there is also a healthy dose of skepticism around many of the new digital technologies being developed, in many cases there is very little experimental data to show the digital solution is better than current practice. Many of the digital solutions are providing growers and agronomist with more information on which to make a decision. Many of the growers and agronomists I spoke to said they didn’t want more information, they already have too much, they are looking for a solution, they want the profitable management decision. I believe the application of machine learning/artificial intelligence, combined with the development of new statistical methods to analyse this growing pool of data has the potential to significantly improve the financial profitability of growers but it is going to take validation and this takes time, we only get one opportunity per year to test new technology under field conditions.

At EvokeAg in 2020, I am facilitating the session ‘increasing the outputs, with less inputs. better decisions using technology’ and I will share more of the insights gained during this trip. Look forward to seeing you there.

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