 This is Precision Agriculture in the Southeast, and I'm Mark Hall. I'm an Extension Specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. And more importantly than me is Dr. John Fulton, our Agronomy Team Leader, Precision Ag Expert for Auburn University. This has been a real learning experience for me, John, on precision agriculture. It's something we need to do. Most of our farmers are doing, I don't know if most of them, but a high percentage of them are doing it. And where I got started was on today's lesson, soil fertility. That was like the number one thing in my old high school classmate, Buzz Smith, up in Athens. The co-op got into that grid sampling that we talked about last time on two and a half acres. This is a big selling point. Soil fertility, and with fertilizer prices as high as they are, this is more important now than ever. Yeah, and we're not only talking about fertility, but we're also talking about trying to grow our organic matters. So we're making some measurements there. We're pushing soil health in this country. And so it's soil infertility, the pH aspect, as critical as it is to maintain profitability at the farm and across the field. So all we're going to do in this mark is probably the biggest question that our farmers ask is, what do I need to go out and do this and just give some thought to this as we go through, talk about some of the tools that you do need or would have to purchase, but just also just kind of get in your mindset, what am I getting myself into? So we're just going to focus really kind of narrow it down and talk about fertility and anything that we're going out doing in the soil core and pulling that and doing some analysis on that. So this is all we're talking about steps. So just backing up, site-specific management, we're just fundamentally trying to require our input needs based on measured variability out there. And so as we apply fertilizers, now we're talking about matching seeding rates to yield potential. And so that's what site-specific management is about, is taking the field and talking about what the interfield variability is in managing. So there's a lot of common sense ideas that can be employed, but can you use that on your farm and do some on-farm research that kind of fine-tune your farm operation? We'll go start back here. We're trying to implement site-specific management. Ultimately, we know we're trying to drive potentially zones, but we could use grids, go to that lesson and talk about what the difference is. But our big thing is there is no best approach. Start somewhere and allow yourself to grow with it and learn as you go. And so if variability exists in a high percentage of the fields here in Alabama, Mark, we know variability exists. See what you can measure and see if you're willing to invest and try and make it more profitable. So with that, we're talking about some directed soil sampling today. We'll talk about as precision soil sampling on our website. Again, there's grids, it's about two and a half acre on average. It's a quick way to get a snapshot. You really don't have to know any field knowledge out there. As we grow in samples, we're going to have to spend more money. And it's very labor-intensive because we can have 50 grids out there, and if we zoned it out, we might only have four or five zones. So there's some differences, but yet a little bit different in approach and so consider it. Zones could be anywhere from, oh, nominally, it's 10 to 20 acres. It could be five. It could be smaller as you kind of define what that zone. But you've got to have something in-house, some kind of knowledge, some kind of data sets and a time required to generate these zones. Whether you're going to do that yourself, probably 95 or 96 percent of our farmers are going to have someone help them do this, because that time involvement to come and derive these zones. So there's a little bit more setup and time in that zone process. And so that's why a lot of times you'll see guys start with grid. I've got a field boundary, I can grid it out, and I don't need an extensive data set to really get the zones defined. The guys, I was amazed the first time I saw it, but they have a forerunner with an automatic soil sample puller, and they know what they're doing, and boy, they can just come in and vroom, vroom, vroom, and you got it. Yep. So two ways. There is no set way, no best way. It's get your comfort zone and start doing something. So the first step is we're going to break it down and we're going to talk field by field. I think science and what we've been able to do in our precision egg program, that's the first thing. Get your mindset that it's a field by field. And what works in one might not be the same thing that I want to do in the other, but I want to try and drive down and look at that field and look at the profitability and make some. Can I characterize the soil and landscapes? Dr. Schull has done a tremendous amount of research on this end, a development and improved soil surveys. You can get terrain attributes, slopes, you know, in my northern face and southern east, west facing, there's a lot of that information you can get. And sometimes you can get free data sets to develop this. So electrical conductivity or soil EC is something that a lot of services will provide to come out and do a soil EC map. And sometimes that does a great job of defining texture does a good job down in our sandy soils in the southern part of state. Not quite as good in the northern part, but is it is something that you can start to look at and say how I might zone or break that field up in areas to manage. And then, you know, there's some other things, texture and this organic carbon or organic matter depth, the topsoil in some cases, Mark, you know, we've got a lot of eroded soils and I can look at do I even have topsoil and what's the depth and that could be a primary driver of how I break fields up too. So there's a lot of ways to break your soils up. Most people aren't going to have this in house immediately, but, you know, think about ways to get some of the free data and a lot of these services will help you start to develop some of this. Our biggest thing is get out with your farmer or if you're a farmer, get people out there talking. What's your management strategies? What have you been doing? What makes sense? Should I be zones? Should I make grids? You know, choose that yourself as a farmer, but get out there and talk about it and see what makes the most sense to you. I'd find a better group than that to talk to, John. Those are pretty smart individuals there. Yeah, they are. I say that jokingly, but Daniel's a sharp cookie and he's doing that now. Absolutely, and AJ's now doing some work and Simerjee and Jonathan definitely, all those guys are doing work in this area, and I think they all would tell you, you got to get out there and talk about your land and what makes most sense. So that's our thing. Step one, get out there and talk about it. Get your field boundaries mapped. If nothing more, a lot of times you'll be surprised just by your acreage that you get from this map. I've been telling this for 30 years. I always thought it was 40 acres. The next thing you know, it's 38, it's 42, it's 43. And you've been paying rent on 45 and you got 32. So, but the first thing is, no matter what your approach is, you got to get a field boundary. Really, there's two ways to do it. You can get an ATV or a mapping unit with a GPS and go out and do a field boundary. But in some cases, in most of these farm management information systems, I can get a basically a visible remote sense imagery like you see at the bottom and draw them in manually or have someone draw them in. And so I don't have to go out to the field. It'd be best to go to the field so you really define where am I really managing to? What's that real boundary? But you know, Google Earth will allow you to draw in boundaries. So, two ways to do that. Once I have my boundary, now the next step is, I got to have usually an ATV or a Mule or something. I got my GPS receiver, DGPS. I got some kind of computer to collect data with mapping software. I connect them up and I'm out there, you know, basically doing my boundary mapping, which ultimately then becomes my vehicle to go out and collect soil samples, Mark. So I need to typically a vehicle or you're gonna be out there all day, DGPS receiver, some kind of handheld today or a computer that has the software that allows you very easily to get your boundary but also allows you to go out and navigate the points. And when we started, we'd strap that on our back. Oh, that was low band on the totem pole job to have to carry that thing around the field. I remember spending days walking in fields and then it took some time. That was torment. So today, you know, whether it's a four wheeler or some kind of these ATVs today and they're pretty fast and you trying to be as efficient as possible but that's what you need. You know, and a lot of options out there from a computer and software and a lot of these software packages are very easy to use today. Now, they do cost some money, Mark, but they've really improved the simplistic stepping through. I would need to collect a boundary or I'm gonna go out and sample, I need to load a map. You know. Well, it's one of those things, John. I mean, precision ag is gonna make you money and let's get it in doable chunks. Pay somebody to do some of this stuff. I mean, you'll make money, you'll get a return on that investment that you don't have to do every little thing yourself. You can, there's help. Absolutely. And most, like I said, on most of this, like spacing on the soil sampling in, you know, all of our input suppliers selling a CPS, you know, the co-op or AgriFC stores, they're all providing that soil sampling. It can help you generate your grades and zones. So you don't have to spend a time on any of that. Just a little kind of housekeeping. Number one, there's a lot of handheld, little handheld computers. We use tablets today in our program, you know, and these can range from, you can spend $500 up to, you know, almost $4,000 getting some of these. But it's just not that. It's really the software that you want. And so you can go to an ag leader or a tremble, some of these other software companies and get an infield software package that you can collect data with, you know. We're gonna talk about just real briefly, you know, can they make a shape file? Because most all these programs, then shape file is an asery, you can go out and learn about it. But then today, if it can do a shape file, you can collect point data, line data, or area data, like a boundary, you know. And it doesn't save it in a shape file because if it does a shape file, it's probably gonna go into any software package. Whether you're buying that software package or going back, getting someone to help you, they can accept that shape file. The other thing is you can have generic text files. We're talking in the yield monitoring mapping, I showed some text files of data. But normally shape files are kind of somewhat standard today. So just be thinking about if I'm buying something, does it generate a shape file for me at the end of the day? Because I'm gonna probably share that with someone to get them to help me or put it into my software. There's these proprietary type file formats. Also, if I'm proprietary, I'm gonna have to have a specific software program to read it and make it usable to me. And so if I'm asking someone to help me, they may or may not be able to handle that proprietary data. We're much better at this today. We don't see a lot of issues sharing data from some of these handhelds to the software, but just recognize, yeah, there's some proprietary things that exist out there. John, what I like about the handheld, where I'll use that is if I see a unique problem, I can get a location and then tell whoever needs to know, hey, this exists here and not have to say, go to the old tree and turn right and blah, blah, blah. You can say, exactly, here it is. Absolutely. Go there and you'll see it. And one last thing to mention on this is that there's some, a lot of app development. All of a sudden I don't need a tablet, I don't need a specialized handheld. You're seeing apps that allow you to collect this boundary data or do some of this sampling and in some cases are free of charge. Wow. And so you can take your smartphone and all of a sudden it can, without a lot of cost, go out and do some neat things like you said out there. So we got our map, we got a field computer handheld or today we're turning our smartphone, we can go out and do some things. The thing is with a lot of these handhelds they're hardened, they can hand up to the dirt and the environment we're sticking them in. Whereas your smartphone, as you know, Mark Water and some of this environment can have a negative effect on it. So just keep that in mind that we're out in the world and soil and farm and the environment we're sticking these into. Got my boundary map, I'm bringing it into my software package again. This would be just like if someone's helping me. They're gonna probably have an arrow image of my farm. I can bring my yield map in and also, excuse me, my boundary map. I can bring my yield data into and also I'm building information for that field. But the boundary map is the critical because everything I'm gonna do is gonna be based on that boundary map. So we wanna make sure we get a good, accurate boundary map that we're gonna do all of our management based upon. Got that in. Unique thing is if I'm using RTK to collect that data which that's what we use in our program I got a very accurate elevation data that I can use. And so also I've got not only boundary but I can go out and collect quickly some elevation data that might be very important on how I choose to move forward here. So got all that, I got my boundary map, I've got my system in place to go out and collect that. Now how do I create those zones and grids? Again, go back to the other module and kind of figure out what's gonna work best for you but I've gotta generate those and then ultimately the sampling side. Let's get back out and talk to the farmer. Okay, or the farmer needs to be talking to people. Let's make sure the strategy that we're kind of thinking about is the right thing after we get those boundaries and someone else maybe even collected those. Oh, they need to maybe understand some things that you're telling them but once they see it they understand it. So we're discussing, we come back out what other data layers are out there that I could capitalize on. We got images or visible images that are free. We got soil maps, I can bring elevation in in most of it. There's a lot of others but then today that farmer knowledge is very critical to be involved in this equation. So if variability exists and it makes sense for that field we're moving on we can generate these grids or zones and the sampling sites potentially. Sometimes you pay, today there are some software out there that are free but if I'm gonna buy a service from someone you're gonna have to pay for it Mark. But once you decide a zone or a grid in this case we're looking at both as examples you get your sampling sites and we can develop that either using an AG GIS or farm management information. I can also be able to maybe draw some things. I see some areas say I wanna draw around that area because something's really going on in focus so get in and someone either doing this for you or if I'm doing it. I'd break that up. In this case I'm just giving an example of a grid at the top left. Those are one acre grids for this example. It puts a point at the middle. I take that point file that's on the bottom right and that's what I'm gonna take out to the field with me and navigate to those points. Those points are numbered. So I give it a field ID so maybe this is field one and then within that field I might have 30, 35 sites and they're already numbered. The important of that is I wanna make sure my site that I collect my soil sample matches up with the data that I send to the lab. Whether that's a private lab or to our lab here I better make sure that however my nomenclature matches up so I can come back and tie that all back in to making this work for me. So head out to the field. Okay, I got my sites. I load that shape file typically back onto this and I've got my points in hand and I've got my numbering system already established and I got that already on the screen and so whether I have boxes or bags I'm writing that information right on them. If I can print it out using a little printer in some cases I'm making sure that that point can get matched back to that soil sample. My equipment not only to have an ATV we've gone through some of this but maybe I better have some flags just in case I need to mark something and come back to it, have buckets. A lot of times we talk about having buckets so as you've got multiple people throw it in the bucket, mix it up, put it in the bag. Do you have the core in the box? You know, and do you have that measured in no till from zero to six where you can get accurately a six inch and you're just navigating the points, trying to spread out around that point or zone or making sure you get across that zone and collecting points. You can do a composite, put it in the bag, mark it appropriately, okay? But this is what you need. The biggest question most people are gonna have is do I have the right field computer or what do I use for that and do I have the software to make this happen? Those are probably the biggest things because most everyone will have an ATV and the core devices, it's computer software and there's just a lot of options out there. Here's an example, just an example. There's some different ways. We grid sample and do five to eight cores minimum per grid, okay? Most of the times we're around that six or seven depending on the size. We'll drive to the grid center and then we'll spread out in a 20 foot radius and get six kind of throw that in and that'll represent that grid. Again, just an example. I can zigzag back and forth. I've heard people doing that again trying to get some representation but it's what you're willing to spend time and pay for is the big thing. Zone sampling depends on the size but we're somewhere between 10 to 20 cores minimum to represent that zone so you gotta go across that zone and get those cores, composite it, put it in the bag, label it and you're going on. To help you out, again, here's some examples for you. Mark that you were talking about an ATV, it's got basically a drill on it with an auger so you're not having to press that core device in the ground each and every day. The GPS on the front, you got your software there in front of you, you're driving, you're taking your cores, never getting off and putting those cores in the rack on the back and you're off and that's a one man show, not multiple and so there's some different ways. A lot of people you're starting to see this more often as the Wintex has a couple different options but again, more of an automated. This can fit on a four wheeler, can fit on a gator, can fit on a mule, you can buy all the, it just attaches, hydraulically driven in most cases, press down again and one man show, a lot of cores per day, that's the big thing. I got 2,000 acres, gosh, it's going to take some time and so these types of systems can really help and not hurt your back at the end of the day as well, Mark. Agrobotics, just a couple of examples, they've got one, this is hard to see in this particular picture but it does two cores, one on each side at an angle, pulls those cores, brings it in and puts them in the back, automatically for you. They also have this automated auto probe that you probably, people can go out and look at. You probably more likely see an input supplier providing services to have one of these or some of the C technology companies working on their research but basically you drive it across and it pulls cores across that field, brings them to the bag, you put them in the bag and you mark those bags and it does all that in the cab almost automatically other than the guy driving does have to drive and close the bag for you. So there's a lot of options to help you in this process so you don't have to have two, three or four people out there doing it and that's all I'm saying is you can spend a little bit of money and do this, get it more automated. Here's GVM, so agro probes, I'm sure there's others out there but just think about it, if you're gonna get into business or wanna do this on your farm, are you willing to work your back for several days on end to get your cores? Cheap enough to hire somebody's got one of these machines to come in and do it for you. Absolutely, normally you'll find out, I'll try it one year and the next year I'm willing to pay for the service. That check gets smaller and smaller, don't it? So that just kinda gives you, we wanna quantify, this is what we're trying to drive to, can we quantify that field spatial variability? Fertility levels are big, organic matter, we're starting to measure more and more of and we talk about soil health, some of the good work that Charlie Mitchell's doing and trying to better look at the productivity of that soil and then what can we do to improve that? So we're just beyond fertility and PhD, we're looking at some other components. So we got to our soil samples mark, we're gonna send those either to a private lab or bring them down here to our public lab. You know, all our soil samples, our lab's doing a great job. Over the last year and a half, we've sent hundreds of samples in from all of our research sites and within 24 hours we have the results for the NPK and PHBAC. I mean, it's just impressive to turn around. Plus they give it to me in the format I like, a text file. That's important. On the bottom left, you'll see our report but I can get a text file of that and all of a sudden I merge that back into my grid or zone file and now I've got my grid, all the soil analysis for that grid or zone automatically tied back to that map. Okay, and I can do this in these ag GIS programs or someone else is doing it, they will have. But our lab gives it to us in a text file. It's a very quick process to tie that and merge that into that spatial data and now not only do I have the map in my grid or zone, I've got all that fertility and possibly recommendations built back in to that map. So this is what it looks like. All of a sudden I can generate a bunch of maps. This one's PH, red's below 6.0. Those are areas that we're gonna need to focus on in terms of applying lime and that's what we did in this scenario. We weren't applying lime to most of that field but down to bottom on the southern edge of that field. You can see we had some areas that we needed to focus on and get that back up into that acceptable range for what we're doing at that farm. Well, that saved you a lot of money right there. Absolutely. You're getting what you need, where you need it. So on this field alone at this farm when we did this a few years ago, there was about a $29 per acre savings on the fertilizer bill. This is PH, as you can see, but the same thing. We had a lot of high P and K values, just not needed. And so that was 2010 values, $29 an acre mark. You know, that means something. We've done all that so we go out and we're gonna apply that same field. This is basically a fertilizer prescription map. You can see three rates. Zero, green, basically the yellow and orange there, though the rates seem high. We're not putting a lot of product, not a lot of P205 or K20 out in that field. And again, there's a $29 straight off the top savings by knowing this. This is a grid sample example, but we could have done the same thing if we're doing zones. But you can see that there's some things we need to consider to maintain the level of fertility out there. So in summary, we didn't get through everything, but the idea here is hopefully you got some of the steps, some of the necessary technology to make this reality. It's not rocket science mark in most cases. It's just a time, it's really a time commitment. But you do have to have a GPS, the software, and some kind of handheld or computer and house. I can't emphasize enough that the farmer's knowledge is such a valuable data layer that's gotta be included in discussions. That's why we highlighted it in steps one and two. And then fertility, elevation, and other soil sampling, organic matter in particular can be very valuable on how you proceed and maybe trying to improve organic matter. As we promote no-till and conservation tillage, we wanna improve organic matter. We potentially, some of the drought conditions we get into, we know what that can mean to us of maintaining some profitability out there versus not having a crop at all. So that's what some of this can bring to the forefront. Hopefully it's been education just to get started. That's what we're talking about. We're just getting started here. John, I think the main takeaway is that you can do this. If you can plant a seed and harvest a crop, you can do this. And number two is there's folks out there that can help you. There are knowledgeable industry professionals that can help you get started. And when you get into some kind of glitch, they'll help you through it. And don't be intimidated by just the volume of, oh man, that's a lot of stuff. Well, it is, but just get started. Just get started and you'll be happy with the results. Our farmers can do this and it'll be a blessing to them. And don't give up in year one. Just because you thought you were gonna get a result and that didn't quite work out. Maybe that's the result you needed to understand. But over time, given time, most of all of our folks, when they start, the guys start, that's what we're talking about here today. But given time, it'll be profitable in the long haul for you. Thank you, John.