An award-winning South-west farmer has turned to the new Omnia precision farming system from Hutchinsons in a bid to maximise efficiency across his 1,093ha contract farming operation.
Jeremy Oatey, of Agricola Growers Ltd, will trial the unique precision farming service this autumn and hopes it will bring together the array of variable rate and mapping information currently used to ultimately improve yields and save the business time and money.
“We farm across quite a large area and have big variations in soil properties which we’ve made big steps in improving over the 10 years since we started the business,” Mr Oatey said.
All arable land has been conductivity tested by SOYL to allow variable-rate drilling with the farm’s Horsch Pronto and Lemken Solitair machines, and rotational soil nutrient sampling and mapping is also used extensively for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
“Every field is tested for P and K roughly every four years now, and we’re finding it’s really helping to pull up yields on the poorer land, while maintaining yields on the best,” Mr Oatey added.
Yara’s N-Sensor is used for variable nitrogen applications and the naturally acidic soils are also now being regularly pH tested. The main drilling tractors are being upgraded with John Deere’s StarFire 2 GPS this autumn after the system was successfully tested on potato bed formation.
“We’ve probably seen a 0.75t/ha improvement in yields since we started to use variable-rate and GPS mapping technology, but I think there’s still room to improve further,” Mr Oatey said, adding he believed Omnia could play a key role in this by bringing the variety of precision farming systems together, allowing for more informed crop management decision making and sub-management of agronomy within fields to target specific problems of in-field zones.
“At the moment we’re using several different systems that feed into the Gatekeeper crop record package, and it all feels quite ‘bitty’. Hopefully drawing it all together will help us achieve a higher standard of technical performance and accuracy right the way through everything we do and give us more flexibility to make our own plans based on a variety of information.”
Informed decision making
Hutchinsons’ precision technology manager, Oliver Wood, said the key benefit of Omnia was its ability to process multiple layers of data from a wide variety of sources and file formats in a user-friendly and accurate way that can then feed back into any variable rate application systems.
It’s also fully compatible with Gatekeeper crop management software, allowing data to be extracted for analysis and variable application plans to be loaded back in.
“Systems that can record data on-farm are becoming much more widespread, so the issue now is increasingly about how you interpret and use that data to best effect,” he said. “Omnia is an agronomist-led service that allows independent decision-making based on sound data from a variety of sources.
“While Omnia can readily provide the full range of data gathering, sampling and analysis services, we’re very happy to use data from a wide range sources. Omnia is designed to analyse, interpret and create independent agronomic advice on a variable-application basis and therefore is not tied into any particular service or product.”
Omnia is a management planning tool that in most cases is used in the office due to the level of computing power required to analyse multiple layers of data.
“The vast majority of rural areas just don’t have the strength of data connection required for any cloud-based package to work properly, let alone one with this level of processing,” Mr Wood added. “When 3G or 4G is more widely available in rural areas, then I’m sure this is something we’ll look at doing.”
Omnia at a glance
- A unique integrated management tool from leading agronomists Hutchinsons.
- Can use precision farming data from any source and can export work plans to a wide range of farm machinery.
- Combines multiple layers of data (for example, soil zones, yield maps, weed maps, nutrient status, manure plans and seed-rate maps) to create the most detailed variable-application plans available in the UK.
- Service can be tailored to the individual farm business.
- Fully compatible with Gatekeeper, allowing seamless data exchange.
- Allows precision farming decisions to be based on a range of data rather than the single strands of information that have been available previously.
For more information visit: www.hlhltd.co.uk.
