Latimer, Iowa (north central) | I will take the contrarian point of view here I guess. We have yield maps, they are pretty to look at. Do I make many decisions based off of them? Not of any substance. Did prescription rate planting based of yield maps for a few years, don't anymore. Use manure for 95% percent of fertilizer, no reason to variable rate. Haven't limed a field since went to cover crops an no-till. Pattern tile entire fields not just a couple spots. What one spot in the given field did compared to another spot in the field makes no difference in what to pay to buy land or rent land, what went across the scale from the entire farm does. Can't buy or rent the best 1/2. (Aside from putting the obvious in CRP, but I don't need a yield map to tell me those spots...) Pouring over yield maps is a good way to pretend to be very busy analyzing menial details and the agronomy salesmen can pat themselves on the back.
The bias of the yield map data leads to the forgone conclusions and decisions based on those conclusions are flawed. A+B+C+D+E+F+G etc=Z or because of A and B does that cause C and =Z? changing 1 letter will change the result and each year that letter to be changed will be different. Until mother flips the script. Overall soil health makes much more difference then anything else we have done.
Weather controls much more then zone management ever will. Take last year for example, our best yields, by 100 bpa on corn, were in the low ground that normally holds too much water to even produce a crop. Based of yield map that area should not even have been planted because nothing grown there in 5 years. One year the high ground may be the best, the next year the low ground. Sure glad I fertilize and plant both areas since I cannot tell you what the weather for the season holds ahead of time. Not even the weathergirls can do that but time is better spent looking for pups at the beach then pretty yield maps. |
Yield Mapping - Uses?
