Over the course of several years, we sometimes run into farmers that dislike our prescriptive maps. (odd, huh? but true.) Most of them are very understanding and chock it up to a learning experience to improve upon next season. However, we always take it to heart and work to make them meet their objectives. One such way is to load up a file on a laptop and do some pretend farming while the soil is frozen. This is also a great way to get our computer geeks out to the field and "feel" the changes as if they were farming it.
So how does it work? We basically just drive up and down some rows, through some low areas and basically just looking for places that might be "weird" in the map based on the current position. During this particular run we found that some of our logarithmic logic wasn't quite as smooth between SSURGO zones as it appeared on the map. We discussed how we would change the parameters in the algorithms between stops.
We visited another field with some different logic applied to it. The maps looked much better. In fact, the particular fields we traversed had both extreme hills, along with minor topographic changes. There were stark changes in soil color, and moderate variations, all within the same 200 acres. A stiff boot heel kick into the soil made checking soil color easy, as well and the driver going to what he perceived to be "a good area" and then the laptop operator stating the rate out loud.
All in all, we learned a lot about what made the algorithms work and where we needed to make adjustments (and some ideas about specifically how.) It was really cool to see the maps locate and accurately describe just slight changes in the field that you could intuitively perceive.
What tips do you have to prevent waste on your farm for the 2013 crop? Do you ever "pretend farm" as a way to help you learn?
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