Farmers could use the gap created by an early harvest to identify loss-making land before committing seed and inputs to another cropping season. Yield maps can reveal areas that repeatedly fail to cover costs. Analysing several seasons together can indicate whether margins could be improved by tweaking crop management, reducing inputs or use environmental options.
Looking at several years of information together can distinguish persistent problems from the effects of an unusually good or bad season, says Ben Foster, RHIZA product manager at Agrii.
“One of the biggest areas where I see farms losing money is through farming unprofitable land. With harvest complete, now is the perfect time to use yield data to determine the question: should I be farming this land or not?”
This year’s earlier harvest has increased the opportunity. The longer interval before autumn drilling gives growers more time to examine crop performance rather than simply moving straight into establishment. “The longer period between harvest and autumn drilling gives growers time to review which varieties were successful. As well as pinpointing areas of fields that performed well, and those that didn’t,” explains Mr Foster.
Sam Fordham, head of technical at RHIZA, used yield maps from his own farm near Saffron Walden in Essex to assess which areas were consistently underperforming. He then calculated their financial contribution.
“I stacked around eight years’ worth of yield maps on top of each other, normalising the output, to give a really well visualised map of how the field performed in each area”, says Mr Fordham. “I worked out my output over the eight years, two full rotations of farming at a year period. From there, I could calculate what my basic gross margin per hectare was for each area”.
But identifying poorer land does not necessarily mean taking it out of production. Mr Fordham considered Sustainable Farming Incentive options for weaker areas but decided that continued production offered better long-term management opportunities.
“By stacking SFI in-crop options, such as PRF1 variable rate, no insecticide and companion cropping, I could significantly increase gross margins in those areas without negatively impacting the positive areas of the field”, explains Mr Fordham.
Practical decisions
Modern combine harvesters already collect large quantities of information. The business challenge is converting those records into decisions that improve margins, says Mr Fordham.
Yield maps can be compared with soil analysis and satellite imagery to investigate why crops perform differently across a field. This can help determine whether poorer performance reflects soil characteristics, crop establishment or another constraint.
Agrii’s Contour digital farming platform is one system designed to combine these datasets. “Contour is a really good way to analyse yield data against a variety of other sources of information, such as soil analysis and satellite imagery”, adds Mr Foster.
Satellite information can also provide an early indication of where yield differences are likely to emerge later in the season. “Nine times out of ten, if you look at the variance in a satellite image in March or April, that variance will reflect the yield map in the summer.”
The strongest evidence comes from comparing several seasons rather than relying on a single harvest. Weather, cropping and establishment can distort results in individual years, while repeated patterns point towards more persistent problems. That makes historic combine records potentially valuable business information. Many farms already hold years of data that can be assessed without collecting anything new.
The aim should be to establish why an area performs poorly before changing its management. Some land may warrant lower inputs, while other areas could justify remedial work or a different cropping approach. Environmental schemes can provide another option where the economics support them, although Mr Fordham says growers should consider the range of measures available rather than automatically removing poorer land from production.
The immediate opportunity is to use the additional time before drilling. Reviewing yield performance now gives growers the chance to make changes before another season’s costs are committed.