1R. Colley III, 1J. Fulton, 2N. Douridas, 1K. Port
1. Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
2. Molly Caren Agricultural Center, London, Ohio
Digital tools and data collection have become standard in a wide variety of present day agricultural operations. An array of digital tools, such as high resolution operational mapping, remote sensing, and farm management software offer solutions to many of the problems in modern agriculture. These technologies and services can, if implemented correctly, provide both immediate and long term agronomic value. A growing number of producers in Ohio and around North America question the proper method of initiating and/or advancing their investment in digital agriculture technologies and services due to multiple associated challenges. Sometimes, technology providers boast unachievable benefits while field-scale savings can make the perceived return on investment unclear. This has led to a void between producers and technology providers that continues to grow as technology advances.
An attempt was made to close this void through utilizing a myriad of available technologies to document data that can be collected through commercial technologies by farmers. This project followed the data collection process for a single field, and specifically for a single corn plant in order to understand the type and total amount of data being collected. A total of 18.5 GB of data was collected that included 2,476 individual files. These files were then categorized and ranked according to ease of adoption, added value, amount of generated data, and various other categories. The highest rankings in these categories signify the types of technologies found most valuable to the production of this corn plant. Key data layers used by the famer during the 2017 growing season were as-planted, yield, imagery, seeding Rx and weather. Post-harvest analyses provided a means to separate data layers or files that provided value and ROI to the farmer. While impractical in commercial application, this platform served as a means to encourage adoption of these technologies and a determination of the many ways that data can be collected, analyzed, and acted upon in the current state of digital agriculture.
