BIG DATA ▶▶▶
whether it concerns field and crop informa- tion, weather and precipitation data, or infor- mation from data collected from using ma- chines, implements and sensors. More and more farmers and contractors realise that their tractors also collect valuable, and more impor- tantly free data every time they use them. Linking GPS coordinates to these data pro- vides site specific information as well, and it is proving ever easier to do this.
Tractor data gathered during for example ploughing, provide a good indication of the soil conditions.
provide the most important data of them all: “The yield is the culmination of your work, it’s
how you make a living as an arable farmer.” Every additional data layer adds value,
Cable or box Increasing numbers of state-of-the-art tractor models have their GPS system, vehicle elec- tronics (CAN bus/Isobus) and electronics to manage/operate machines and implements integrated. Vehicle, field and implement data are then collected by a single terminal that processes and stores all the data. If the GPS system or autopilot system is not connected to the terminal in your tractor (vehicle), you cannot simply link the tractor data to GPS
Establishing correlations is of crucial importance
Dutch arable farmer and contractor Daniël Cerfontaine regards yield measurement as the most important data set when it comes to site specific data collection. “The yield is the culmination of your work, it’s how you make a living as an arable farmer. Any other site specific field and crop data aas well as vehicle data are also useful, certainly if you can simply collect that data continuously and automatically ‘for free’. For his contracting business, however, he wants to obtain more detailed information regarding fuel con- sumption, effective hours and productivity. As an arable farmer, he hopes to be able to establish a relationship between the re- quired traction (for tillage) and the soil struc- ture. “I would like to have as much data avail- able as possible in order to make objective decisions. I don’t feel that’s possible yet. We decide too often based on a gut feeling. The trick is to capture that gut feeling in tangible and validated figures. Data are currently too unreliable, and insufficient to base my deci- sions on. There is too little that I can do with all the data we collect.” However, Daniël sees possibilities for making
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Daniël Cerfontaine, contractor and arable farmer Berg en Terblijt (NL).
judgements regarding variation in soil struc- ture based on traction measurements. If there’s little or no correlation, one could re- frain from carrying out (costly) soil scans. “The more data you have, the better, but es- tablishing correlations and relationships is of
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 27 August 2019
crucial importance, and that really is a job for data analysts. Let them analyse the data, and let agronomists then interpret the informa- tion. That will enable us arable farmers to de- cide whether or not to carry out a crop relat- ed intervention.”
PHOTO: LEX SALVERDA
PHOTO: PETER ROEK
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