Indiana farmers are anxious to get in the field and start the 2014 planting season, and some of them will have new technology onboard this year. FieldScripts® from Monsanto provides seed selection and a variable rate seeding prescription right in the cab. Dave Rhylander says it will roll out in Indiana, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota.
“Last year we had 150 farmers testing in those four states. We had maybe 25 farmers in Indiana that actually ground truthed this for us last year, and the whole objective was to have them test it and kind of debug the system for us so we could come back and take some learnings from their experiences and make a better product so when we launched it we had a better product for the farmers who would buy in 2014.”
FieldScripts effectively diagnoses individual and unique farm field conditions to maximize that field’s yield potential.
“It’s the best hybrid match for that particular field and then we write a variable seeding rate that will change every ten meters in a field if it requires, by up to 500 seeds. The objective is to not overplant the poor areas of the field, put the right amount of seed on that area and then redistribute that seed to other areas of the field that should actually be planted at a higher population than what the farmer could today.”
One thing Monsanto has learned through testing and debugging is that farmers will need to accumulate 3 years of data to plug into FieldScripts.
“When we started this last year with these farmers in Indiana we only asked them for 2 years of yield data,” Rhylander said. “What we learned from this is we cannot use just 2 years. We need to have 3 years of data, so that was a significant learning for us. the other thing that we learned, you set your yield target for the fieldscript based upon how you’re going to fertilize the field.”
If you’re thinking about FieldScripts for the future, Rhylander says start saving the data. You’ll need the 3 years total and 2 years of corn, plus 3 acre grid samples, not 4 acre grid samples. And the Monsanto approach to data is, if you create it, it’s yours.
Learn more in the full interview:Dave Rhylander-FieldScripts