How FieldView™ Can Help You Make Your Seed Decisions for Next Year

There’s an old builder’s adage – measure twice, cut once. Certainly, words to live by in this year of sky-high lumber prices. But there’s a more important meaning hiding in this time-honoured phrase. It speaks to the undeniable value of preparation and planning, to the importance of being well informed before you commit to something you can’t go back on.

That couldn’t be more true when it comes to making seed decisions for your farm. Your entire season rests on the choices you make at the start. And with so many new hybrids and varieties hitting the market each year, it takes a lot to narrow down which ones will work best in your field. That’s where Climate FieldView^TM comes in. You can use features like Field Region Reports, Field Health Imagery and Yield Analysis to gain meaningful insights about your farm that allow you to make informed seed decisions for next season – decisions that can boost your yield and better your ROI. It’s like we say - analyze twice, choose once.

Recently we hosted a webinar exploring the topic of using field data to inform seed decisions. Our team discussed yield, good data acquisition practices and everything in-between. Here are the 5 key takeaways every grower should know:

1. MAKE EVERY FIELD A TRIAL FIELD

It may sound like a lot of upfront effort, but making all of your fields into trial fields will pay data dividends down the road. A bigger sample size means deeper insights and a more robust data set to compare to harvest. It’s how you come to understand the ‘why’ behind a hybrid or variety’s performance. It doesn’t have to be all seed trials either. You could run fertilizer rate, plant population or protection product trials. Everything you do on your farm impacts yield and running trials in FieldView allows you to understand those impacts and make better seed decisions for next season.

2. START SMALL

If you’re new to the platform – start small. Try adding a bag or two of a new variety or hybrid in with your primary seed choice. This is an easy trick to see how a new product stacks up against your go-to. You can then track that data in FieldView all season long and compare it to the harvest data from both seeds. This small but effective window into performance can help you determine if that trendy new seed that you’ve been hearing so much about is actually the right choice for your field.

3. USE FIELD HEALTH IMAGERY FOR BETTER TRAIT SELECTION

With traditional methods, determining a trait’s effectiveness can be challenging. Field Health Imagery goes deeper, allowing you to identify biomass differences in your crops – a powerful insight for evaluating trait performance. Look at Eastern Canada where insect pressure on corn has led to the development of a vast array of insect protection products. By using Field Health Imagery, you can identify areas of high and low biomass and compare those to your corn yield data, helping you understand if your trait is protecting effectively.

But it’s not just protection that impacts crops, early season vigor does too. Hybrids and varieties with traits that encourage early emergence and strong plant establishment show high biomass markers as well. That early season vigor is extra important in challenging conditions like those we’ve seen in Western Canada with canola this year. If you’re a canola grower, knowing that a hybrid or variety has great emergence makes your seed decisions that much easier.

4. USE COMBINE DATA TO EVALUATE PERFORMANCE

When we talk about harvest we tend to focus on yield. But that’s missing part of the story – ease of harvest. Hybrids and varieties that harvest well on your farm mean you’ll be able to combine more acres faster – reducing strain on your operations resources and minimizing wear and tear on your equipment. FieldView lets you record important data from your combine, like speed of harvest. You can then use that data, in conjunction with yield data, to determine if a particular hybrid or variety gave you the smooth harvest and ROI you were looking for.

5. LEVERAGE MULTIYEAR DATA TO SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE

As we all know, conditions change year to year, and those changes greatly impact your yield. So, it probably isn’t wise to go flipping your entire farm to that new hybrid that knocked it out of the park last season. Instead, get a bigger picture view of how your seed choices are performing by using FieldView to collect and analyze data over multiple seasons. That way, you can balance averages and make good risk management decisions for your farm.

To view the entire webinar on how FieldView can help you make your seed decisions for next season, follow the link below.