Early spring ahead

Matt Gosling
AGRI-TREND Independent Agri-Coach

 

Early spring ahead. No, I don’t mean daylight savings. I mean I can’t remember as mild a winter as we’ve seen this year. The coffee-shop reminisces about the winter of 1988 … I was in Grade 3 that year, and all I remember was the Olympic craze.
Lots of things in agriculture have progressed since then, and especially in the last few years – technology advancements have been embraced by many producers.
Even without all the snow that we’ve been used to in years past, our soil moisture levels are great.
Last year, that was our saving grace around the immediate Strathmore area as we received four to five inches of in-season precipitation in places and we still came up with a just-less-than average crop. There’s enough water in the soil to get our crops off to a great start, so pending average precipitation (usually around eight inches), we should be in for a decent yielding year.
Another thing to expect this year is more technology adoption. Precision farming in our business has grown substantially in the last two years, and I predict that trend will continue.
It’s getting very impractical (outside of investment purposes) to purchase land that will support itself solely on farming income. As land prices increase, the only way to make more grain is to do a better job of it and reallocating resources into areas that need them more than the ones that don’t.
Not that long ago, this “Variable Rate Technology” was pretty rough and challenging to manage. Every year, it gets a little easier and with better measurement and accurate yield mapping, we can make better decisions.
Data, data, data … farmers are inundated with information and consumers are demanding to know where their food is coming from. I think this is a healthy and positive trend that will do a couple of things. Informing the consumer about what our industry does is important. We feed people, plain and simple. We are primary producers that live off the land and if the weather doesn’t cooperate, well, there’s always next year … hopefully! It should also make producers a little more responsible to being a steward of the land and the environment if more eyes are watching them.
The use of UAV’s (drones) is something we will be trying this year. Sensory technology has exponentially improved in the last two years, and it’s not slowing down. It’s been on the cover of every magazine and paper the last few months, for good reason. We’ll be able to collect very specific data in-season to make quick, practical decisions on a square foot basis.
As always, I’m very optimistic about the year ahead. If you ever have any questions, ask me on Twitter (@PremiumAg). Have a great growing season!