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Understanding the land

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Understanding the land

16/10/2014

Article taken from the Agronomist & Arable Farmer Vegetable Guide

Soil is the most valuable asset a grower can have.  The science behind nutrient balance goes back as far as history can show us that removing crops and balancing that removal with fertiliser, manures and lime hasn’t vastly changed.

Ultimately we need to understand the soil and need to ensure we use technology to help us understand the bioscience beneath our feet.

With a wealth of year’s experience, Agrovista offers GPS mapping through its precision and technology arm, Plantsystems.  Rather than be fixed on one system, it recognises that in conjunction with its agronomists and precision team it can advise growers about which system will best suit their needs and land.

This data is derived and collected from a highly accurate sampling system that collects each soil sample and gives it an accurate GPS coordinate, allowing the data to be mapped and visually understood, and allowing repeat sampling of the same spot in the future.

This data can also be transferred to other systems and used in variable rate machinery.

The common mapping types are: 
The most common type of precision sampling done in the UK, it is simple to understand and gives a uniform sample standard across the farm.  The industry ‘standard’ is one sample per hectare and the size of the sample can be customised to suit the grower.

 Adds a new dimension to knowledge of your soil.  This moves mapping a step further and adds electronic defining lines between the soil changes that may not be apparent to the eye, both a top and sub-soil level.

Target sampling is less common and is used where other data layers can help identify the areas we should be sampling; an example would be choosing points from yield map data.  As we get more data on the fields from yield maps, crop sensors, satellite imagery, this will become a more popular option in the future.

 This system suits farms with inherently variable soils, or for those who want to make use of soil conductivity maps.  The conductivity scan firstly looks at soil types, and then how to best target the sampling based on the results from the scanning.  The assumption of this type of sampling is that a light soil will lose nutrients differently to a heavy soil, therefore with sample by soil type the different soils can be judged independently of each other.