Ep. 50: The #1 AgTech Trend You Should Know About
Ep. 50: The #1 AgTech Trend You Should Know About with John Fulton (Plus the Latest Precision Ag Research and Tech Tips for Harvest)
If John Fulton could label the 2022 farming year with one AgTech product, he’d tell you it would “go down in his book as the year of the spray drones.”
In this episode of the Precision Points Podcast, John Fulton, a professor in the Food, Agriculture and Biological Engineering Department at The Ohio State University, reveals one of the biggest AgTech topics he’s experienced while traveling, presenting and meeting growers at meetings and conferences.
“I couldn’t turn around and someone not mention spray drones,” says Fulton. “I just couldn’t believe the level of interest in spray drones all of a sudden.”
Fulton says ag labor challenges coupled with custom application availability gave spray drones a unique opportunity to enter the growing season.
“When you’re growing row crops, timing’s everything on inputs,” says Fulton. “But there was limited access to custom application, whether that was via planes or ground rigs, and it was challenging.”
As a result, farmers began purchasing spray drones to fill the gap, allowing them to apply fungicide timely within the short timeframe they were already allotted.
One of the appeals to spray drones Fulton relates is the cost.
“It’s a little bit of money, but it’s not a hundred thousand dollars like some of the equipment,” explains Fulton.
While drone spraying is giving growers the capacity to make timely decisions on inputs when conditions might not be conducive to ground or aerial application, Fulton says he doesn’t see this technology replacing current machinery or aerial applicators.
“It’s really just a new tool in the toolbox,” says Fulton. “When you look at trying to cover thousands of acres and do that in a timely fashion, we continue to still need aerial applicators, like planes and helicopters specifically.”
Even with a lot yet to learn about this new technology and its best uses, drone spraying has brought a lot of interest from growers, alluding to the conditions farmers are currently facing.
For more potential drone spraying applications, like cover crops, and other tech tips to prepare for the upcoming harvest season, listen to the full episode.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
[03:26] Guest John Fulton discusses some of the recent research projects he has been working on, including variable rate seeding, pivot irrigation, planter technology, crop spacing by population, automation, and drone spraying.
[05:44] John recaps what crops are looking like across the Midwest and how weather patterns are influencing windows for growers.
[07:52] Soil compaction studies are being evaluated at the on-farm level and John dives into how compaction can be indicated through different data mechanisms.
[13:00] John addresses row spacing and its potential to impact yield.
[18:13] John explains why 2022 is the year of spray drones and how they’re filling the gap in labor shortages, custom applicator availability, and timely applications.
[24:03] While drone spraying may be a beneficial “new tool in the toolbox,” John explains why he doesn’t see this technology replacing current machinery and aerial applicators.
[26:26] John gives advice on what growers can be doing now to prep for harvest and even spring planting next year, from having parts on hand to making sure your firmware is up to date.
[31:17] John explains the importance of calibrating yield monitors and explains two different ways to calibrate sensors for accurate flows.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Yield Monitor Calibration Quick Start Guides - https://digitalag.osu.edu/precision-ag/research-focuses/harvest-technologies
eFields On-Farm Research Publication - https://digitalag.osu.edu/efields-about
25 Proven Practices To Help Maximize Planter Technology ROI - https://mailchi.mp/precisionagreviews/planter-tech-eguide
Connect with:
Bio
John Fulton is a professor in the Food, Agriculture and Biological Engineering Department at The Ohio State University. His research and extension efforts focus on precision agriculture, machinery automation and use of spatial data to improve crop production and the farm business.
Transcription
Voiceover (00:03):
Welcome to Precision Points, an AgTech podcast where we plant seeds of innovation to inspire informed decisions about precision technology and its impact for growers like you. We explore precision ag tools and technology, from the soil to the sky with your host Morgan Seger.
Morgan Seger (00:22):
Welcome back to Precision Points, an AgTech podcast from precisionagreviews.com. I'm your host, Morgan Seger, and in each episode we work to bring you AgTech information and ideas. This is a really fun and exciting episode for us because this is our first episode back from a summer break and it's episode 50. So to kick us off on this new season of Precision Ag podcast, we have John Fulton from the Ohio State University. Now, if you've listened to Precision Points in the past, you know that John Fulton is kind of a regular. We love having him on. He does a great job sharing not only what's going on in Ohio but what's going on across the country and at a larger scale with precision ag in general.
Morgan Seger (01:05):
So we have a really kind of wide ranging interview to get us going again. He talks about trends he's seen and he's very, very excited about drone sprayers. So he shares some of his experiences with that and I was really surprised by some of the numbers he shared. So you won't want to miss that part. And then we dive into what to be thinking about with harvest right around the corner. So it's September 22nd, some of you might be in the fields already, some of you are gearing up to get in there. He kind of walks us through those things that we want to be doing right now, including things we should be doing now for spring 2023. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with John Fulton. Here we go. John, welcome back to Precision Points.
John Fulton (01:50):
Yeah, thanks for having me again.
Morgan Seger (01:52):
I'm excited to catch up. It's been a while since we've had an opportunity to record here on the podcast. For those of our listeners that are new, would you mind just introducing yourself again? I know you've been on our show pretty frequently.
John Fulton (02:05):
Yeah, it's a pleasure. My name's John Fulton. I'm a faculty member at Ohio State University and really my research and teaching focuses around precision ag, we call it digital ag today as we think about all the data and some of the artificial intelligence and algorithms and predictive modeling that's going on here. But that's my focus and really enjoy being here in Ohio, serving Ohio agriculture.
Morgan Seger (02:34):
Yeah, that's great. I know this summer was the first time my husband got to meet you at one of your field days and you also got to meet all of our kiddos. How was your summer? What have you been up to?
John Fulton (02:44):
It was great. Yeah, it was really fun meeting them. You're alluding to the field day and I think we'll get into some of these topics in a bit, but we're talking spray drones that day and it was exciting to see your husband and the kids, they were pretty fired up when they got to see all that, so that's great to see the energy. But we've been busy as usual. I think everyone has. Central Ohio up to even northwest Ohio, crops are looking pretty good and we got I think most of, if not all, our data collected for the growing season. And so we're just kind of holding off here till harvest coming up here pretty quick.
Morgan Seger (03:21):
Yeah. So speaking of that, what are your trials looking like? What's out there? What are we hoping to learn this summer?
John Fulton (03:26):
Yeah, well, we've got pretty diversified. We're doing some on-farm research around variable rate seeding, planting. Pretty excited about that because that's been a multiyear project and I think we're really getting to fine-tune what the prescription maps are going to look like for the growers involved in that and learning along the way of what data informs those prescriptions and so that's exciting. Been doing some work on some pivot irrigation and scheduling and using soil moisture sensors as feedback to help support that. Also working on some other irrigation slash projects that are new and some planter technology continues to be something that there's some innovation and advancement around that.
John Fulton (04:20):
More recently, it's kind of this technology agronomy, but really looking at spacing for corn and soybeans and by population that kind of work and trying to identify some opportunities that in particular, Ohio growers could take advantage of if you start thinking about possibly going to some narrower row on corn and thinking about 15 versus 20 in corn... soybean, excuse me. So we got some research along those lines. And then finally, the hot topics are automation and part of that automation really centers around drones, or UASs, and we've been working in some different capacity, anything from delivery of inputs to the farm gate, to really diving into this spray drone and cover crops. Cover crop delivery with drones, that's a pretty hot topic here in Ohio, especially on the western border up to the northwest part of the state.
Morgan Seger (05:31):
Yeah. Wow. So you have a ton of things going on. How are they looking overall? I know when you look at the crops across the country, it's really hit or miss on how things are looking.
John Fulton (05:44):
Yeah, and I've been blessed to do some travel this summer for conferences and meetings and you're right, here in the central part of the state, even a little bit north, crops look really good. I mean, I'm not saying we don't have a field here or there that's kind of struggled, but when you get out and about and look at some of the other states, or on the periphery of some states, it's tough going. I mean to a point where some folks aren't going to probably harvest the crop. And so that reaches kind of northern Illinois up through the Dakotas a little bit. Nebraska got hit pretty hard this year, unfortunately. You also look at some states where some drought set in too. And so I'd say across Indiana, Ohio and even Illinois, the central part of those states, crops look pretty good and we're pretty blessed. I'm not going to say it's going to be a bumper crop, but things look pretty good.
John Fulton (06:40):
Back on some of our studies, we're pretty excited to get into field and get to harvesting here soon. We feel like, especially in some of our compaction studies, we may learn a few things for this growing season considering some of the rain events we've had and the timing of field operations around that and how do we best manage those conditions. I mean, we don't think, or I don't think we're going to have a change. These weather patterns and stuff are definitely influencing windows that get operations completed for growers, but given a window, how do we best utilize that, but yet minimize impact like soil compaction? So pretty wide swath there about conditions, but we'll see what we learn here come harvest.
Morgan Seger (07:30):
Yeah, well, it sounds like we'll be able to at least collect some of that data so we can analyze it and try to get some insights out of this. I'm curious, when you're talking about your compaction studies, do you measure that by yield or how do you measure the impact of compaction and also, how do you cause it, is it intentional?
John Fulton (07:52):
Well, I don't want to say we're intentionally causing compaction. What a lot of our work... occasionally we'll do some things kind of at a plot level where we are, say intentionally looking at axle loading. I mean, we're talking about pretty heavy axle loading, specifically on combines and grain carts when they're loaded. We're talking 40-plus tons axle loads, so we'll get into that. But a lot of our... We've shifted and had a pleasure working with growers and so we're really operating at field scale. How do we measure that? First of all, I mean we normally use a cone penetrometer most frequently as in a tool to evaluate "compaction." Penetrometer, if folks haven't seen it, I assume most consultants and farmers have probably seen the basic ones that are held; Dickey-John and some others build them, but they're basically hand penetrometers that very simply have... you basically press them in the ground and they have a display that kind of indicates whether there is an existing of compaction or not. And if so, at what depth. You can evaluate at what depth that begins to be a more dense layer.
John Fulton (09:12):
And so that's the primary way that we use to quantify that is using penetrometers and that's really evaluating soil strength. So if you do have compaction, it's going to be harder to press in and we measure that based on the load cell mounted on that. So that's our primary way. But I also want to say that we also use some of the machine data to evaluate compaction. And so when you look at whether that's an as applied map or yield map, we know where those machines have operated in the field and so we know essentially the path and so that kind of gives us more of a targeted approach of possibly looking where do we need to go look possibly. So the other thing that we've been using more frequently is the feedback from planters. And so that's more surface compaction for everyone out there.
John Fulton (10:09):
We normally split compaction into more of a surface compaction and that's something we can, we'll say mitigate and manage through tillage and the natural free stall cycle will influence that. But we also have deep compaction that starts to be more problematic in that you get down three, four foot some of these axle loads... That's something that very difficult to break up and manage with tillage and stuff. So I say all that is we use down force on these planters today, they're given how much down force per row units being applied to keep those row units in the ground and seeding at the depth that's targeted. And so we're using those as a mechanism to identify some of the surface compaction. Again, that drives us to areas where we'll go out and do penetrometer measurements to ground truth that as well. And so you use some of these data being collected off the machines as ways to maybe early indicators and then... but we're normally going out and doing some scouting and using penetrometers to measure it.
Morgan Seger (11:22):
Okay, well you definitely taught me something new. That's a new word for me, but that's interesting. I was just like in my head, imagining you guys trying to compact the soil and then not and that seems very counterproductive. So it's interesting to hear kind of the story behind it.
John Fulton (11:43):
Well, and I mean think about your own farm. I mean, if there's some variability and we've got soil maps, remote sense imagery that maps soil texture and things pretty well too and we use that as inputs to this as well. But at the same time when used machines, these newer machines we're collecting data off of them like fuel usage, power use, torque use, those are good indicators. Again, they may not identify that that's specifically compaction, it could be simply a change in a clay loam to a pure loam or something similar in a field. But the point is, those are kind of indirect feedback that we can go and say, "Yeah, we may want to take a closer look, because we were... the tillage tool or planter, tillage tool as an example was pulling a lot harder in that area of the field and maybe we did have some so we need to take a little closer look." So the machine data helps us as well along with the yield data.
Morgan Seger (12:41):
Yeah, for sure. And it's nice that you're able to kind of connect all those dots and use all the data together. One trial that I was excited to hear you guys are working on again is the spacing. So you talk about not just plant-to-plant spacing with population but also with row width. What are you guys looking at this year?
John Fulton (13:00):
Well, we're going back and looking and we've been doing this for a few years in a couple locations, looking at kind of row spacing. So spacing by population, which to your point, population really gets down to what's the distance between plants? And so we're kind of evaluating that and the theory in that, and it's nothing new, is we as we continue to push like corn populations and you think about getting into that 36, 38, 40,000 plants per acre range, we're starting to put those corn plants pretty tight together within a row. I mean, you can depend on your population; your less than six could be five inches at those higher populations.
John Fulton (13:52):
The point is you start to potentially get a lot more competition between those plants that ultimately could impact yield. The theory is, at least, my theory and I think a lot of other people is, to combat that, to address the plant spacing. If you go to 20-inch rows, now all of a sudden we're able to and planting those a little higher, we start to get those plants back out to six plus seven inches apart. And so, depending on agronomists as you move around the country, somewhere between six and seven in my book seems to be the tightest you want to be here, the optimum. And so that's where you get kind of going to those narrow row spaces.
John Fulton (14:37):
The question then is can I get more ears, can I get more yield out of that? And the last three years specifically in our corn would suggest yes. But at the flip side of that is well what is the gain potentially when you get to those higher populations in good yielding ground? That's a pretty significant capital investment for growers to switch say from 30 inch, down to 20 inch. And so we're trying to really hone in on what the ROI or the value is and say, "Yeah, sure it's several million," if you're kind of doing new... It's going to be pretty expensive, you get a new header and then think about your nitrogen, how you're going to put your nitrogen on and plant that, so you got a new planter, you got to think about your fertility program specifically nitrogen and in season if you want to cover those crops, corn in this case, and then get you a new header to make that happen, that's a pretty significant investment to transition to kind of narrow row corn.
John Fulton (15:39):
And beans, we constantly see, in my view, and again this is just based on work over the last several years, we've been able to use some of these row crop planters today and do a better job of placing soybeans and there's a value to that in my book. And we're seeing we can drop populations but there's kind of an optimum there as you think about disease and weeds and things like that. You don't want to get too low, you can have a negative impact, but we're seeing the reduction of that and in some cases it really depends on the field and your soil conditions. We've seen some value in thinking about variable rate seeding of soybeans.
John Fulton (16:25):
In particular if you got some hard ground, we want to bump up those populations, say that we're kind of doing early planting, sure I want to be back up to those 160s just to be able to get a 100, 120 out of the ground emerged. But in some areas we can get pretty good organic matter. We can easily be down at 80,000 and still be at 85, 90% emergence and be pretty good and maintain yield. Yeah, if you take your average plant across the field, we've been able to drop that even more. So the grand scheme of that is potential seed savings while maintaining yield. The ultimate goal, at least in that strategy for variable rate seeding soybeans is trying to get... use variable rate seeding to deal with emergence or potential emergence issues in some of that harder ground.
Morgan Seger (17:18):
Well, I just love that you guys are looking at the whole system approach when you talked about ROI; it's not just changing your population, it's looking at the equipment and the nutrient and all of those pieces that go into it as well. So I'm super excited to see how this ends up and all of this will be in the eFields book come January, right?
John Fulton (17:40):
We continue to publish some of those projects absolutely in the eFields and so you'll see some of the work specifically. We've got a lot of folks that contributed to that across the state doing similar if not different field scale research. So yes, that'll be in there for me. Definitely, we're going to have some work on that variable rate seeding coming out in the 2022 eFields version. That'll be out hopefully the first week of January of 2023.
Morgan Seger (18:13):
Awesome. So you mentioned that you had been at some conferences and you've been doing grower meetings and things like that. Anything stick out to you from this summer?
John Fulton (18:25):
2022's going to go down in my book as the year of the spray drones.
Morgan Seger (18:30):
Okay.
John Fulton (18:31):
It started back in January at some retailer meetings. I had an opportunity to go present and visit with their members, which are farmers, and I've told people all year, I mean doesn't matter if it's a grower meeting or AgTech... or conference, spray drones, in my book, and maybe it's just because the line of work that I do that people tend to talk to me more about the technology side of stuff, I couldn't turn around and someone not mention spray drones or a lot of young folks from the farm, "Hey I bought a spray drone, what do you think? How can I start my business?" And it just got to the point I just couldn't believe the level of interest in spray drones all of a sudden. But I think that also alludes to kind of some of the conditions out there that we're seeing from a farmer's perspective.
John Fulton (19:28):
And so you think without a doubt, and when you're growing crops and we'll keep it to row crops for the discussion today, I mean timing's everything on some of these inputs. I mean, fungicides in particular, you may have a short window, a four, five, six day window and say, "I need to get my fungicide on in that window," and depending on weather it could be a shrunk down timeframe just because of the growth stage that you're at with that crop. So what you saw coupled with that is labor challenges that we're having not only at the farm but within the ag industry, ag businesses, retailers specifically, and where you live this June, it wasn't that they're not kind of out there, but there was limited access to custom application, whether that was via planes or ground rigs, it was a challenge.
John Fulton (20:29):
And so all of a sudden what you saw was, "But I can get a spray drone out there," leaning on custom application either through the retailer or similar type company, and I've told a lot of people this on the western part of the state, Darke, Mercer, up through there. I wouldn't be surprised if we surveyed it that, I've told people, 50 plus percent of the wheat there in June got fungicide applied using spray drones. So all of a sudden you had this unique condition that spray drones could fill the gap because it was challenging... It was a challenging time for custom applicators to be available at the timing and cover the acres and all of a sudden spray drones.
John Fulton (21:11):
But I think you'd be surprised, I'm continuing to go on on this thing, the number of farmers that have purchased spray drones. I know a number of farmers here in Ohio that have purchased spray drones, Kentucky, I've talked to some in Indiana that just went out and bought a spray drone themselves. I mean it's a little bit of money but it's not a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars like some of the equipment, but it gives me capacity to not replace ground machines or potentially aerial application but gives me the capacity to be timely given conditions may not be conducive for those others or I can't access that at that point to go out and do some work with them. And so that by far, as you can see, has just been an incredible year of questions and learning and of course we're doing research on that front.
John Fulton (22:07):
And then right now we've worked ourselves into putting cover crops on. Those same spray drones can... we take the tank off, couple these and clip on basically a dry box with a single spinner on it. I can be out putting cover crops on. Again, that's a challenge in the state of Ohio that constantly, one of the bigger challenges was cover crops, is trying to get them out there in a timely fashion, giving them an opportunity to emerge and have some biomass come November or such. So it's pretty unique. So that by far has been the number one technology and discussion board at all these conferences that I've been to, in particular some of the grower meetings. Couple other things, a lot of discussion on automation, some of that's driven by this lack of labor we're seeing in ag. So you're seeing a real interest there, you're seeing some farmers, you're seeing retailers invest in that all of a sudden here. And so even in the state of Iowa we've had investment in automation. So that's probably been another topic that's consistently been brought up at all the meetings.
Morgan Seger (23:25):
Awesome. I love your enthusiasm about this. So spray drones are something that we've talked about a fair amount on the podcast and automation and how it's all going to come together. So I'm excited to hear your stories on how it's actually being implemented now because I feel like a lot of what we talked about, while there were people executing on it, a lot of it has been kind of hypothetical, like "Here's how we could use it or here's how we would use it." So I'm thrilled to hear the numbers that you are saying as far as how many people you think are actually engaging with this. When you talk about the cover crops, is that primarily being interseeded into the crop that's standing right now?
John Fulton (24:03):
Correct. Yeah, I should have been specific. So you think about corn specifically or even beans, yeah, I can interseed that right now and I know some of my friends and farmers travels over your neck of the woods, see if they've signed up some acres to have them flown on and so it's really a new tool in the toolbox. I'd be first to tell you, we got a lot to learn; we're still learning, but exponentially this thing is kind of taking off and so is our learning around what works, what doesn't and how do we best use them. But I want to be clear, I think it's just a new tool, it's an opportunity, but I don't see it replacing people and I don't really see it replacing the current machinery that applies either liquids or dry products out there. I mean, we got a lot of acres to cover, it's about being timely when we can get it done and this is just an opportunity to maybe do some things with this type of tool that are probably not going to be broad acres, I mean not at this point at least.
Morgan Seger (25:12):
Yeah, it could definitely fill in, though, on those acres that would've gotten missed for whatever, environmental, rain or things like that, if you weren't able to get in, I could see it being a good fit.
John Fulton (25:25):
Spot in, spot spray, spot in, do a small field, 20 acres, 40 acres maybe that, yeah, it's kind of wet but I can get out there. But when you look at trying to cover thousands of acres and do that in timely fashion, we continue to still need the aerial applicators, planes and helicopters specifically is what we use in this state for fungicides, but at the same time using ground machines and I don't see replacing any of those at this point. It is just another tool that gives us... broadens our windows and really focuses in on some opportunities to do something maybe when those don't fit the bill.
Morgan Seger (26:07):
Awesome. Well if we could shift gears here a little bit, this episode's coming out on September 22nd, so I'm sure harvest is going to be top of mind for most farmers in our area, probably across the whole country. What things do you think we should be thinking about when we're thinking about precision ag and harvest or fall?
John Fulton (26:26):
We all recognize today and ag that the supply chain has been altered from COVID, no doubt about it. And this was kind of something that came out last year, but I think as we sit here and harvest or coming in to harvest this fall 2022, I think about parts and I think about technology and I think everyone recognizes, but I'll go ahead and say it, but I need to make sure I got my parts in hand specifically for getting me through harvest, some of those high wear parts, and make sure that I got those in hand ready to go, whether it's in the shop or on the truck, the service truck or whatever. But make sure you're thinking ahead and have those things ready to go. We service machines and dealers do a nice job on it, but I will tell growers it's not a bad idea to go over your machine one more time.
John Fulton (27:23):
I mean we're just in a scenario that you can't afford to have that machine stop, we've known that forever, but the bigger challenge is if something major goes wrong, getting parts and addressing and getting you back running could be a real challenge. I mean there are not a lot of machines out there to replace that today, meaning, you travel around, you don't see a lot of combines on a lot. So my point in that is, it is not bad to just jump on the machine and take a visual look and go around it one more time just to make sure that nothing was missed, not saying they would, but just everything's greased, everything's in good working order, mechanically everything is in good sight there and... I just think that's a really important job today because of this situation we're in. I just don't want to have like what we had a few growers last year that kind of broke down and you're kind of left and you're out two or three weeks, if not trying to lean on someone else to get it done.
John Fulton (28:26):
So it's a unique but probably more of what we're going to see here for a few years too, situation. So being proactive on that front. And it's not a bad idea... I emphasized this last year and if you don't... Get you a electric blower and put it on your service truck and every night, doesn't matter the hour it is when you shut the machine down, blow it off and clean it up, that way when you come back in the morning, you can kind of go back, you can again, look at the visual inspection, make sure there's not an oil leak that you didn't see because it was covered by some stover or some of the dust on the machine, but you can do a quick look over. I'm a firm believer on having an electric blower, it could be gas power, but electrics are fairly cheap and nice to have today, but blow, all the dust, all the dirt off the engine, all the way up to the header and the feeder house and on the sides, blow it all off before you go home.
John Fulton (29:24):
And then when you come home back in the morning and fill up with fuel and maintenance, you can look it over and make sure that you don't have potentially a problem at your hand that you may not seen. In terms of technology, and it's the repeated comment, make sure all your firmware is up to date. I think at least for ours, we've had everything updated this year earlier and we're in pretty good shape. So I would check with your dealers just one more time to make sure there's not a more recent firmware update or something. And I think we're getting pretty good about that, but just it doesn't hurt on the receiver or the display and other technology. But I think more too, I encourage folks because we see the data as far as trends, we constantly see yield data becoming more of a layer that's being used to inform fertility recommendations and used in other parts of precision ag data analysis and services that are out there.
John Fulton (30:26):
If that's the case in going back to our discussion around ROI and value, then as a grower I need to take some time and do some calibration of that on you’re yield monitor. And doesn't matter what your brand is of combine and technology, you know need to be doing multi-point, what we call multi-point calibration, it's a tedious task, a timely task, but if data is going to be something informing prescriptions or recommendations and some of the other profit maps are becoming popular, then I need to take that time to calibrate it because it's important for me in that field, in other fields that that data's pretty accurate and reflective of true yield across that.
John Fulton (31:17):
The lack of calibration influences you and can have a tremendous impact and negative impact on what you ultimately decide to do on that field if it's going to inform some of the fertility and some of those recommendations without a doubt. So, that calibration means a lot. We're still... Though I understand there's some auto-calibration, Deere has their own, even Ag Leader has some technology today, but just making sure that I would encourage you to go through and do a manual calibration and even check that calibration occasionally just to ensure that you're within two to 3%. That's attainable, but is a necessary step if data's going to be an important piece of the operations, in particular, informing recommendations.
Morgan Seger (32:10):
Could you walk us through how you do a multi-point calibration?
John Fulton (32:13):
Yeah, so there's two ways and I'm going to tell you... and we got quick guides on our precision ag website. So folks out there, if you just Google Ohio State Precision Ag, you can get to our digital/precision ag website and go to the harvest page and you'll see down there the list that's quick guides to calibration. And so we have all that accumulated for the different manufacturers on our website. But to do multi-point calibration, basically what we're doing is we call it a mass flow sensor. I say most people recognize today is mounted at the top of the clean grain elevator, and simply put that mass flow sensor, as grain comes up, the clean grain comes up the clean grain elevator, it impacts that mass flow sensor and it deflects. And this sensor then can measure what we measure as a pounds per second flow through the clean grain elevator.
John Fulton (33:24):
So you can think of it, if I'm going at constant speed, more flow is higher yield. More pounds per second equates to more bushels per acre. But basically we're taking that sensor and doing a pounds per second. The idea though, that sensor and the output of that sensor is what we call non-linear, meaning it's not a straight line. As I depress it more and more and more, the output of that is just not in a straight line. What it is is a very curved line and so it's very important to do low flow kind of in the middle kind of flow ranges in terms of pounds per second. And then you want to, if possible, do some high flow. The way we change that flow and calibrate the sensor is we either drive slower or faster. So normally in general, we want four speeds or four points, to be able to map out that response curve of that sensor and so we'll drive, let's say we're in corn, and we may drive three miles an hour, four miles an hour, five miles an hour and six miles an hour. That's pretty common.
John Fulton (34:33):
And so that gives us hopefully the range of expected flow rates across those because I'm slower when I have a lower pounds per second, at six miles an hour I'm going to have a higher, and you get four or five and then that maps out that response curve. And so you want to do that and then we suggest that you go back and once you do that, go back and do another calibration load at which you kind of think that, "If I'm going to run five miles an hour, and I think on average this field's going to be 180," kind of get in a spot where you feel comfortable, that's kind of 180 bushel, give or take, and you run five miles an hour and on your fifth one and do another calibration and see what that comes out as.
John Fulton (35:25):
And on the displays they'll give you an error calculation. And a lot of times hopefully, and normally, we can get that error down to two to 3%. Sometimes you do that fifth calibration, you could be seven or 8%. So you got to do a little bit more work to get some more calibration loads. But the whole idea in this is to be able to do different speeds, as one example, to get that response curve built for that sensor and the way you operate that combine. Just to acknowledge another way to do that is I take, maybe I go five miles an hour and I got a 12 row header and I'll do 12 rows. I might do eight rows and I do six rows or four rows. I'll do four different row widths to get that pounds per second to change, but I maintain the same ground speed. So that's two different ways to get different flows through the combine to calibrate the sensor.
Morgan Seger (36:23):
Interesting. That was more in depth than what I expected it to be. I thought that we just harvested some and then dumped and weighted and made sure that the monitor said what the weight ticket said or the grain cart said.
John Fulton (36:35):
That's right. And that's what you're doing. A lot of guys and ladies have grain carts today, the more modern, the newer ones are really getting better, being able to weigh and so you can harvest at a given speed or a given width, you harvest 4,000 plus pounds at least. And then say the monitor says, hey, it's 4,200, the weight cart says it's 3,800 as an example, you put that in the monitor and then it'll recalibrate and recompute that data.
Morgan Seger (37:07):
Yep. But I definitely, I agree, I mean that's something we've talked about for a long time is that we need good calibrated data if you plan on using it. And the other side of that is if you're not sure you're going to use it, but you have the ability to get good calibrated data, you should in case you change your mind and you end up using it down the road or want a multi-year analysis later, it always is good to have good clean data.
John Fulton (37:30):
Absolutely. And to your point, remembering, I think you had a list on last year talking about the work we did around yield monitoring. And I will mention we've got some new data that will be coming out here and that really highlights that. And on average monitors can get, if you got a 40 acre field, 6,000 whatever and I go out and I harvest the crop and I say I take X pounds off the total field, the monitor says I get that X pounds and I take the elevator weights, or if I got some kind of certified scale, I mean it's easy to be within one or 2% and say, "My yield monitor's calibrated."
John Fulton (38:14):
What we showed was last year is yeah, on average in a big field, yeah you might be, but because of not calibrating the sensor, there's places in that field you could easily be 12, we were up over 24% error the way we measured it. And so that tells me you were either high 24, 25%, or you're low and you think about making a decision around that potentially, then that error just propagates through the analysis. And so that's a pretty... 20%'s pretty big number. I think we're at 24 to 27 in some of the parts where it was uncalibrated and it's like that's a big, big, big error if you think about spacing in corn.
Morgan Seger (38:57):
Yeah, that seems really significant. And you're saying that those errors were within the field, but the overall field still fell in that two to 3%?
John Fulton (39:04):
Absolutely, yes.
Morgan Seger (39:05):
Wow.
John Fulton (39:06):
Yeah. That's because, right... And we got this comfort level, we know that the variation... there's going to be yield variation across the field regardless of year and stuff. But last year, if you think about harvest, we had a unique growing condition, but we had some variability in these fields as far as yield. And when we got out of what we called the calibration range, it had been a calibrated monitor, but it wasn't calibrated out for the high yield and the low yield. So we didn't get down to the real low flow rate and get that sensor calibrated and say.
John Fulton (39:41):
This may be a poor example, but it's kind of like your scales at your house. I finally calibrate it to weigh very accurately between 110 pounds and 200 pounds and you get your kids on there that weigh 50 pounds maybe, there could be a big error in that and the scale's probably a poor one to do, but my point is, if we don't calibrate down in that range, you could be off and never know it. But I get on a scales and say I weigh, I don't know, just pick a number 150, it might tell me I'm exactly 150, but when I go outside and I haven't calibrated outside the ranges, the flow rates, there could be a high error and that's where we were getting into the 25 to 27%, as I remember off the top of my head last fall.
John Fulton (40:34):
But on average, we weigh everyone in the house and it's right on, if I take that total weight, it's right on. But so that's the thing, but you take each individual, it could be, yeah, I was kind of right on, or within a couple percent, a kid was off by 20% or 15 or 10% and maybe someone else was over. And on average, the error kind of floats out, or averages out, to pretty small. But each person has a different error associated with them and that's the same for the yield monitors. What's happening?
Morgan Seger (41:10):
Yeah. That seems really notable. And I also appreciate all of the tips on checking the combine. I just can't even think of another piece of equipment that is so big and ran so hard for such a short amount of time throughout the year. So we work so hard all fall and then we park it because we're done and you just don't see it that often. So there's always things that you can probably catch or at least be on the lookout for.
John Fulton (41:37):
Absolutely.
Morgan Seger (41:38):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Is there any other last things you think we should be thinking about before we go into fall?
John Fulton (41:47):
Well, I mean, again, I think the pandemic's kind of got us refocused, but I mean we got to be thinking about planting today. And as you talk to some of the companies like technology suppliers and dealers out there, I mean it's hard to get technology today. So if you're a technology person and if you haven't already got your upgrades for planting, it's a good chance you're not going to get them kind of scenario. But whether it's inputs, I mean, I really do think we're going into a... it's catching up pretty quick here. We're going to go into a much more challenging year on some of our crop protection products and in technology, like I meant. And so we got to be thinking spraying summer now and making sure that we're understanding where we're going to source technology, where we're going to source inputs if available. And it's not a bad idea to have some of your next year inputs sitting in your shop or anything too right now. So that's pretty important, the way kind of what we're dealing with and the conditions out there from the supply chain.
Morgan Seger (43:02):
Yep. I think that's also great advice. It's interesting to think about all of the things that growers have to think about. We're forced lots of times to be short-term thinkers because we have to wait and see what the weather's going to do or this next thing, but we also have to really stretch and do all this long term planning more now than ever before.
John Fulton (43:23):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Morgan Seger (43:24):
Great. Well thank you so much, John. I always enjoy catching up and I appreciate you taking time to be on the podcast.
John Fulton (43:30):
Yeah, thank you, I appreciate it.
Morgan Seger (43:33):
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Precision Points. We are so grateful that you choose to spend this time with us. The show notes for this episode will be available at precisionagreviews.com. In those show notes we'll also link out to those combine calibration quick starts that John mentioned in our conversations so you can use those as a guide to calibrate in your combine this fall. We hope you have a safe and successful harvest and we will see you on the next episode of Precision Points. Let's grow together.
Voiceover (44:06):
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