Robert Saik says there are plenty of reasons why farmers should take advantage of high-speed internet now that it’s available in their cabs.Saik is founder of the Agritrend group of companies and his crop advisers have used cellular phone based internet for a decade. He said the usefulness of recent developments in cellular based high-speed internet will depend partly on the accuracy. “There’s some speculation right now about the accuracy. The proof will be in the pudding. It’s all predicated on accuracy.”Saik predicts more will be known about accuracy by the end of this summer. “If it is that good, there’s many more things we can do with it. For example, inter-row seeding between the rows of last year’s crop. That’s the first obvious use.”Because of his focus on plant nutrition, Saik thinks the next move after inter-row seeding will be fall banding variable rate fertilizer with a low disturbance disc or narrow knife. Guided by sub-inch internet based RTK, the opener slices the fertilizer into the soil below and to the side of the intended seed row. In spring, the guidance system lets the producer place seed precisely 1.5 inches to the side and two inches above the fertilizer band, using the same low-disturbance openers. “The move to one-pass seeding has created a logistical nightmare,” Saik said. “It forces us to do everything at the same time in the spring with very heavy and very expensive tractors and drills, and that’s not necessary.” Saik said producers pay a high price for their one-pass spring rush system, mainly higher equipment costs and lower yields due to the annual spring fight between time and good agronomy. “Logistics always trumps agronomics in the spring. We cannot do a good job when we try to do it all in a rush in a short period of time,” he said. “If we use a highly accurate guidance system to put fertilizer down in the fall, we have less draft and we travel faster. We can use a lower horsepower tractor and a lighter and less expensive air seeder. “When spring comes, our fertilizer is already in the ground, so we use the same light tractor and seeder. If it’s a wet spring, we have a better chance of getting the seed in the ground on time, without carting around all that fertilizer.” Row crops present another opportunity for accurate guidance.Saik said crop protection products and nutrients can be sprayed directly onto the target plant, with none wasted on the ground. “Now, if you layer crop-only fungicide application with variable rate fungicide based on bio-vegetative indexing, then you’ve really got something.”Saik said intercropping is another area where agronomists and farmers have a lot to learn. “Could we plant silage barley in April and then come back 45 days later when the first crop is in the five leaf stage to plant a second crop between the April rows?”Is this in the realm of possibility? This kind of thing intrigues me, but it all depends on the accuracy.”I’m reasonably certain that sub-inch will be reliable in most areas. We already use our wireless cards to stay connected to the internet and our clients. The only caveat is the remote areas where the signal is not as strong. That’s the Achilles heel.”Saik said his company’s crop advisers have found that Telus, SaskTel and MTS provide adequate service, but Rogers is weak in many rural areas. “Saskatchewan and Manitoba are supposed to come on-line soon with HSPA (high-speed packet access), which is the new 3G (third generation) network. When that happens, we should have seamless conductivity across the three provinces.”Will the new cellular based RTK guidance be significantly more accurate than the WAAS system that most farmers now use? Maybe not, said Curtis MacKinnon of Farmers Edge Precision Consulting.”The FM radio RTK isn’t much better than the WAAS that most guys use,” he said.”And when you go to cellular, the quality of the signal in the field won’t be much better than FM, but you’ll have better range. Plus there’s no waiting for a signal in the morning. Convergence is immediate.”But the big advantage over FM is the lower cost. It’s a much better price than buying RTK with FM. If you increase productivity by five percent, you recoup the modem cost and your $1,500 subscription fee very quickly.”MacKinnon said efficiency will be a big factor for farmers who hire consultants. If a customer is experiencing a problem in the field, the consultant can diagnose it quickly over the Farmers Edge network without driving out to the farm.”For example, the other night, I was working with one of our customers up at Fisher Branch, (Man.) He has a mini PC in his tractor. “We logged on and I walked him through the prescription files in just a little while. If I’d driven it up there, it would have been at least an eight hour round trip.”MacKinnon said Craig Shaw, a Farmers Edge customer in Lacombe, Alta., used the Raven Slingshot precision agriculture system last spring to try inter-row seeding. “It was also the first time he had seeded with any type of RTK, so he was seeding between crooked rows from the previous year, but it seemed to work pretty well. This spring will be the true test. “Craig is also using the Slingshot on his controlled traffic project. He pioneered that idea. That’s a good example of how cellular and high-speed internet and RTK lets guys think about new opportunities.”Simon Knutson of GIS4AG is reluctant to get overly enthused about high-speed internet in the cab. He said he will remain cautiously optimistic until he sees it’s a proven reality.Knutson specializes in providing farmers with maps for variable rate fertility and chemical applications, topography, drainage, yield mapping, aerial imagery and satellite imagery. He covers Manitoba and parts of Saskatchewan and spends far more time on the highway than he likes. He said he could spend more time serving clients if he reduced the amount of time on the road. “If I could access the screens themselves, then I could program them from home,” Knutson said.”Now I have to be there in person or sometimes I can e-mail files to the farmer. He puts them on his USB stick and takes it out to the tractor. “Today, I was out near Glenboro, (Man.,) installing files in person. Potentially, if high-speed in the cab worked properly, I could send the files and they’d be installed out in the field.”Knutson works with a Rogers Rocket Stick. When he’s close to Winnipeg, he said it’s faster than his cable high-speed connection at home. However, it slows down when the skyscrapers disappear below the horizon. “It’s far from rocket speed in the countryside. If it really was rocket speed, then it would be like true high-speed internet, but it isn’t.”Knutson has doubts about recent announcements that Raven Slingshot and Trimble VRS will provide the Prairies with reliable high-speed internet to machinery cab via the cellular phone networks.”I’m not convinced it will work until the whole wireless network is upgraded. I don’t see how it’s possible (to provide high-speed service) when the network isn’t yet enabled for high-speed.”Ranchview (now Raven Slingshot) said the crop consultant can send prescription maps directly from his office, or wherever he is, to the controller in the cab. “But most of the screens I know of cannot connect directly to the internet, so you still need a laptop with you in the cab. Then you transfer files from the laptop to the screen.”Knutson uses a RTK mobile base station for field mapping because he serves clients over such a large area that he cannot depend on a cellular based system. It costs $13,000 to $15,000.If reliable high-speed service was available through Raven or Trimble, he added, it would likely make more sense for a farmer to use that service than buy an RTK base station. “But first the high-speed cellphone system has to be proven. Whenever anything new like this comes along to make our work more convenient, there’s always something along with it that makes it less convenient. Often it’s the reliability factor.”In many situations, I think there’s no substitute for having the crop consultant right there in the field with the farmer.”For more information, contact Robert Saik at 403-343-8288 or rsaik@agritrend.com, Curtis MacKinnon at 204-825-2331 or farmersedge@mts.net and Simon Knutson at 204-750-9071 or simon@gis4ag.com.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers commit to enhancing competitiveness
Canadian ag ministers said they want to ensure farmers, ranchers and processors are competitive through ongoing regulatory reform and business risk management programs that work.
