By Tom Allen-Stevens
Growers across the UK will shortly be able to accurately predict how much rapeseed, wheat and barley they will harvest this summer.
An update will be released next month into Contour, the data-management platform from Intelligent Precision Farming (IPF) and Agrii SoilQuest, reports Vince Gillingham of AgSpace, who developed the service.
“Existing users of the Contour platform won’t have to do anything – they’ll just see an additional tab appear that will take them through to the yield-prediction area,” he says.
Algorithms developed by AgSpace and tested over the past three seasons use satellite data to predict what the crop will yield. “in cereals, last year it was accurate to within 10% from GS37, which is when Contour will automatically start making the predictions,” says Vince.
Since its launch last month, more than 100,000 new hectares have signed up to Contour for a trial period. Available for free in its first season, the web-based platform collects daily-updated satellite data, and hyper local weather via a digital weather station on farm – local weather data is automatically corrected for your farm.
It combines satellite optical data with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology to predict crop growth information.
“The worst level of cloud cover and snow we’ve seen for seven years has limited results from optical scanning that delivers the NDVI data traditionally used in agriculture,” reports Vince.
“But we’ve collected really good radar data and delivered this to users. We’ve also seen a record number of farmers this year using the data to generate variable N application maps.”
Snow events
The cold start to the year has thrown additional challenges to the AgSpace team. “Data generated during the two snow events this year had to be discounted – snow drifts can skew information on crop biomass,” he explains.
“We have specialists constantly calibrating and updating the model, and it’s currently running well.”
There’s been strong uptake of the service by Agrii agronomists, says Vince, who have signed up their clients via Soilquest and use its functionality to assist planning.
It’s also available to any UK farmer who can sign up for free for the 2018 season, using either the SoilQuest or the IPF portal.
Those who wish to continue with the service will pay £2/ha per year for daily satellite images, hyper local weather, growth stage prediction, green area index data and yield prediction.
CPM has recently published a review of the four leading data-management platforms. There’s also the full story on Contour.
