Vegetable Growers Highlight Success With Precision Ag Technology

What exactly is precision ag? Depending on who you talk to, it can mean different things to different people. Precision ag tools can involve everything from GPS to smart phones to software to seeders — and much more.

American Vegetable Grower caught up with three innovative growers working on farms of various sizes to find out which precision tools they use to increase efficiencies and the bottom line.

Woolf Farming Company
Huron, CA • 7,000 acres

An early adopter of precision ag tools, Woolf Farming Company grows about 7,000 acres of row crop vegetables, including processing tomatoes, dehydrator onions and garlic, broccoli, and cauliflower. The farm began using GPS on tractors for land preparation about 17 years ago and immediately realized a 20% increase in efficiency as overlap on rows was reduced, says Kevin Lehar, crop manager. The farm now uses 13 John Deere tractors equipped with Starfire RTK, a narrow-area differential GPS.

“We are using GPS systems for tractor guidance all the way from land prep to cultivation,” Lehar says. “By using GPS and using our cultivation GPS, we have lowered our weeding costs because we can get a little bit closer with cultivator knives. We also have the precise location and installation of our buried drip irrigation systems.”

Prescriptive Applications
In the last couple of years, he says precision technology has been used to write “prescriptions” to increase accuracy in fertilizer applications as well as the control of nematodes in specific locations in each field.

According to Lehar, the process begins by sampling a 10-acre grid in each 150-acre field for nematodes as well as fertility. Using a variable rate fertilizer applicator, information from the grid sampling is used to determine how much fertilizer is needed or where nematodes are a problem in the field.

“The entire field isn’t getting the same amount of fertilizer or nematicide,” he explains. “It is getting a prescribed amount based on the information plugged in to the application equipment from the grid samples. It is a similar situation with nematode sampling. We can go in and spot treat a field.”

For Woolf Farming this means significant savings as it no longer applies the same rate over an entire field. Prescriptive technology may not be new, but Lehar says it isn’t widely adopted in vegetable crops in the West. He says we’ll likely see its adoption increase, including use with irrigation monitoring because of the current water shortages in California. Moisture sensors in an irrigation system can transmit soil condition information to a dashboard on a website, allowing Lehar and his colleagues to immediately see those field conditions on their iPads, laptops, or smartphones.

“With these systems, we can also put a weather station on the monitoring site for plant stress and potential disease pressure, as well as do site-specific water applications,” he explains.

In conjunction with broadening its use of water monitoring systems, the farm is conducting a pilot project using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) technology, which uses high altitude infrared aerial photographs to identify stressed areas in a field to implement prescriptive irrigation practices.

“The technology allows us to identify spots in fields that may be short of water, prompting us to go look to see if we have any plugging issues in the drip system,” Lehar explains. “We overlay these photographs with the soils map so we know the water-holding capacities of our soils. That may prompt us to run a few extra inches of water during an irrigation to get the field to roughly the same level of applied water to limit plant stress.”

It all comes down to efficiency. “When you look at input costs based on horsepower per acre, we saw the benefits of precision technology,” he says. “California’s minimum wage hike has already been implemented, and more is coming, and we have to contend with the insurance structure of Obamacare. All this equates to substantial financial outlay based on an operation of our size. So anywhere we can save a little bit, that is good for us.”

C&E Farms
Cheriton, VA • 5,000 acres

According to Justin Colson of C&E Farms, precision starts with seed and its accurate placement. Precision planting is critical for his operation, which produces 5,000 acres of green beans from Florida to Pennsylvania. The farm uses equipment from Monosem but Colson says other brands have similar features.

Precision planters with vacuum and air seeding ensure more precise spacing between seeds, avoid skips, and provide accurate planting depth, he says. “They also enable you to monitor what your plant population will be, allowing you to better meet your target instead of just going out there and messing with a few sprockets, planting a field, and realizing when you are done that you are five or six bags short,” Colson adds.

Once you have your crop in place, the next step is to make sure you don’t unintentionally hurt it, or the next crop, by overlapping or over-applying sprays, especially for weed control.

“For crop rotations, I’ve seen where sprayers have over-applied an herbicide on a field. The application may not hurt the crop being produced, but when you go in and plant a crop behind, it can sometimes be a problem if the crop isn’t tolerant to that particular herbicide.”

Having the sprayer know when a portion of the field has already been sprayed and automatically shut off eliminates the risk of over-application.

“Auto section control turns off the sprayer if I drive with the boom on over an area it has sprayed already. It takes human error out of the equation,” Colson says.

Another area where the latest technology has helped with the bottom line is harvesting. The farm uses variable-speed harvesters from Oxbo International that are equipped with cleaning fans that can speed up or slow down as needed, depending on the bean variety being harvested.

“A suction is created with the fans, and if you are harvesting bean varieties that are not as dense, the lighter beans can be blown out by the fans,” he explains. “By controlling the harvester fan speed, you won’t blow out the mature beans.”
The new harvesters also have a variable concave head, which helps with recovering as many beans as possible for harvest.

“This feature allows us to harvest more beans and not break too many or leave too many in the field,” Colson says.

Future Water Management
Like Woolf Farming, C&E is considering its options with variable rate irrigation. Right now, the farm uses mostly center pivot irrigation but may implement precision controls in the future.

“We have fields where the outside edge might have heavier ground and may need more water applied,” he explains. “[Variable rate] would allow us to change the rate of water on each of the nozzles on the irrigation center pivot equipment.”

Four Season Farm,
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
Pocantico Hills, NY • 6 acres

On the smaller end of the production spectrum is Four Season Farm, part of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, located about 25 miles north of New York City. According to Stone Barns’ website, the goal of the nonprofit operation is to “create a healthy and sustainable food system that benefits all of us.”

As precision technology is part of the sustainability equation, Jack Algiere, farm director at Four Seasons Farm, says what works well for the large producer often doesn’t fit the needs of the small grower. He should know. He has been running the center’s 6-acre farm and its half-acre greenhouse, producing about 200 different varieties, for more than 12 years.

Much of the latest technology is computer- or vacuum-driven, which is expensive, so it isn’t being used by the small farmer, he says. Equipment is being developed in Europe that some in the U.S. are taking advantage of, but options are limited for small producers — with the exception of a couple of tools.

He cites the one-, four-, and six-row pinpoint precision seeder from Johnny’s Selected Seed as well as the Jang Automation precision seeder, which is manufactured in Korea.

Algiere also mentions cultivating equipment such as power harrows from Rinaldi, an Italian company, that replace the old standard rototillers. The power harrows are built for the BCS and Grillo walk-behind tractors. BCS and Grillo tractors are also designed in Italy.

In addition, he says Johnny’s Selected Seeds offers other small tools including broadforks, which are part of a precision system.

“[These tools have their] limitations because you couldn’t do much more than 2 acres with them, but it does improve efficiency — and it is precision. The next step is to find equipment to fill that 3- to 20-acre gap.”

To breach the divide, the Slow Tools Project was started several years ago through Stone Barns Center. The goal of the project is to re-invent equipment and tools that will work on a small farm. The project, or as Algiere calls it, the think tank, is made up of growers, manufacturers, and engineers.

In the area of tracking systems, Algiere says the group has found some success. Specifically, a system called Farm Produce Manager from Adak Farm Systems allows the small producer to evaluate planting and harvesting preparation data, and produce reports. It is adaptable to Quick Books and other ways to track invoicing, as well.

Algiere also mentions AgSquared, another record-keeping software program for small, diversified growers. Specifically, AgSquared helps make budgets and track and compare harvest data from year to year.

The Need For Diversity
Overall, he says small producers need equipment and programs that are general, not specific.

“We are small scale and most like us are generalists, and we have a lot of diversity. We need equipment that is for generalists,” Algiere explains. “This is very different from large agriculture that can afford very specific, very precise equipment.”

Many small growers simply want to be able to adjust or build their own tools and be able to use the equipment for many functions, he says.

“When you add precision to the equation, we don’t want to eliminate ourselves from being on the ground,” Algiere explains. “That is one of the principles a lot of small farmers hold close. Their relationship with the space — the ground — allows them to be a better manager so the idea of having a tool isn’t to get them out of the field, but give them a work advantage.”