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Garrett County, MD | Have a company who wants to Veris map my fields. I am interested in going to variable rate so it sounds like a good way to start to me. They want to charge $20/ acre to run the Veris, map it out into zones, pull soil samples in those zones, add those to the mapping, and provide me with 2 years of variable rate prescriptions. Is this a fair price? We are talking a couple thousand acres. I buy most of my seed and all my dry fertilizer from them.
Thanks for any input. |
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| Doesn't sound like a good deal at all to me. The co-op should provide free rec's if you are zone or soil sampling through them. We pay $8/acre they recommend re sampling every 4 years, and it has rec's included with it (both lime and VR fertilizer). So essentially it is $2/ac/year. Where your system is $10/ac/year |
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39.48, -82.98 | If I were you, I'd concentrate on getting good yield data. If you have even three years of data, that will be your best bet in VR. Veris (EC) measures "something" that is supposed to a proxy for yield...but a lot seems to ride on interpretation and local conditions and how long since the last rain, etc. I'd take it with a grain of salt (which also throws off readings) around "here," though I suspect it has its place out west. |
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Langdon, ND | Well it sounds a little high but that might be all relative compared to what your field sizes are, how many soil tests they are doing, and how many prescriptions they are giving (seed, chem, fert), and if its actually good agronomic advice. The highest I've seen in my area for something similar is around $12/ac. I've heard down to $5/ac with a good deal of ground. So I'll say this, say your doing 2000 acres at $20, that's $40,000. The veris machine itself costs around $30k i believe, if zone sampling to only 6" a simple probe is either a few hundred to a mechanized one for a few grand, add in the software that does the rest for say $2000. You could do it yourself and own the machine for less than what you'll spend in one year of course the kicker is time, education of the process, and possible good agronomic services. All in all in my opinion that is way to much money to provide you only with 2 years of prescriptions and zone testing. In my area most will use satellite imagery to make zones (under a $1/ac usually or less) every year, soil test those zones for around $2-3/ac, and give prescriptions for $1-3/ac after that. So anywhere from $4-7/ac usually. Now veris is nice and shows good delineation between soil types which is great. The kicker though to the veris is you really only have to do it once as long as the timing of the application was done correctly. Maybe every 5 to 10 years. What is a good option is to possibly do veris but then add satellite imagery and elevation and of course yield data to the mix if you can. This can give you a better indication of your zones. At the same time if you understand your fields well and can see them through looking and compiling multiple years of satellite imagery from the past (very common up here) then you might be just as good. If you'd want to DIY it you could do it for cheap, under $2/ac for sure but depends on your time and situation. To really answer your question though is yes that seems too high. |
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n.c.iowa | I'd concour with dko. You could do alittle fact finding yourself before jumping in by asking for other local customers.
When the veris machine works, it works pretty good, but it doesn't work everywhere. So that'd be your mission to see if it does work good locally.
What your end goal is, to try to delineate your management zones, so there are a lot of different ways to do this, and that depends on location too.
If the veris machine does work in your area, ask about the protocol they are following, are they testing every acre? Or are they defining management zones before testing, or defining some kind of grid, and only running the machine in a small part of the field?
At first blush that price seems alittle high. |
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SC MN | $18 here includes: EC deep and shallow, Organic Matter, pH, 2.5 grid samples, Fert Rx, Lime Rx, Seed Rx. Veris gives you the most accurate soil type map there is. It will pay for your lime most of the time in 1 years worth of recs.
Edited by southMN89 3/23/2017 09:57
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n.c.iowa | Here it doesn't, it isn't even worth dragging it across the field. |
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Franklinton, LA | What would it cost to buy or rent the Veris equipment and map your own fields? If you buy the equipment you could probably sell it when you complete the mapping of your fields.
I agree with a prior poster. Two or three years of good yield data will provide a lot of information. |
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Texas Panhandle | I did it with Helena a couple years ago. I believe it was $15/ac.
This year Helena had a program where if you ran the machine (changed to some sort of wave machine) over at least 100 acres they give you 1 or 2% back on purchases.
We figured it would pay for 120 acres for me so might as well do it.
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SC MN | where are you at John? just to heavy and mucky soil or what? |
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NC Iowa | Southmn89. Will you email me please? Have some questions for you. |
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Paradise KS | Ec or veris data would be the last set of data I would spend money on, after I had done everything else. Grid sampling, yield data, as applied maps and data are the starting points, then you can go from there. Use that information to create management areas or whatever you want to do.
If you don't know why your doing it or what your going to do with it, don't do it until you have done more research and know what it's worth is. |
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| in most cases from what i have seen yield data overlayed on veris maps has very direct correlation.
when i vr seed i want soil texture, 5 year yield maps and sat imagery, cant get much better than that. |
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| So what makes it accurate on some land and not on others? |
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Concordia, KS | I've dealt with enough Veris data on farms that have yield data to see that in our conditions, the Veris EC map will give you zones similar to what you would find in a normalized yield map. Is it perfect, no, but is it better than nothing at all? Yes.
I think you have a decently priced bundle, when you figure in Veris and zone sampling, you would have probably 18 bucks in it by itself. If your provider is using SST for analysis, they will have a $.90/ per acre per year charge and a minimum of $.75/acre to get the Veris data. That's why prescriptions aren't always free. Dealing with prescriptions and some of the problems associated with them are why a retailer has an upcharge for variable rate application. People's time isn't free, software isn't free, and analytics aren't free.
I wouldn't do your whole farm, try one or two and see if you like the data.
A selling point for me in Veris is the high resolution pH mapping. Instead of a 2.5 acre grid, which is a 330 by 330 ft area, if you Veris on 60 foot swaths, you essentially get a 60 by 60 ft. pH map. A rate controller cant change rates every 60 feet, but it sure can in 120. There have been extreme cases where we have saved enough lime to pay for the Veris trip. Our pH's are highly variable, and we can have 4's to 7.5+ ph's in a single field and we can pick out that variability that we would miss with a grid.
Veris isn't perfect, but if you have no yield data, it works alright. It can be a "measuring with a micrometer and cutting with an axe" type of deal, but is many cases, our agronomy software has outpaced what the machinery can do.
I think its a decent deal, but again, do one or two farms first before you spend $40K. |
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Concordia, KS | What if you have no yield data to start with? |
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| if you dont have a yield monitor how will you know if your vr or fert recs are working that you invest $$$ into. |
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Concordia, KS | You don't other than a soil test, no different than a grid sample. Needs to be done every 4 years or so. It's not perfect. If you work through zone sampling and the EC data, you can define zones and assign yield goals, work through a weighted average and get reasonable VR N recs.. The only way to measure how you are doing is through N use efficiency. Again, it's an educated guess. It works decent on some of th highly variable sands in the Republican River Valley. We have guys that fertilize for 200 bushel irrigated corn every year, raise 170 or 180 and are disappointed. 1.2 to 1.1 lbs of n per bushel. The sand drags field averages down so much that 170 or 180 is pretty typical. We take that Veris data, fertilize the poor sand for 75 and the good ground for 220 and hopefully end up with 170 or 180 averages and put a field average of 160 to 180 lbs N. 1 lb of N per bushel average. I get really scared to push more than that because we don't have that yield data for some guys, but we can at least add some N use effincy for them. Some of these soils have CEC's of 2 to 20. It works because of high variability. If we didn't have that, it would be much harder. |
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Paradise KS | So if the correlations is close why do the verius. |
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Paradise KS | Then spend your money on a yield monitor.... |
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Concordia, KS | I agree. Just saying how my company tries to help guys that don't. |
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NC Kansas | X1000. I've ran one and I couldn't believe how easy it is to get faulty data with it. Too many things have to line up to make it work perfectly. And then your still left with zones that don't really mean anything. Use yield data, do averages over time, establish yield goals in zones, take management zone samples, or grids and fertilize and manage accordingly.
Edited by CaseIHpride 3/23/2017 21:48
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SC MN | Again, where a veris machine will pay dividends is in a lime rec. A veris lime rec is worth its weight in gold, I will guarantee you that! |
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Iowa | We paid $12.50/acre for MZB zone development on a field in 2016, which included a Veris scan, but also additional data layers. Soil sampling was additional, with the price depending on what we wanted.
http://mzbtech.com/ |
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Garrett County, MD | Thanks for all the input.
Sounds like some serious mixed reviews.
I understand the correlation to averaging yields maps, but I was thinking maybe it would allow a guy to go into a new farm and get a map to use for variable rate on year one instead of having to wait for three years of yield maps, then average them and then to create zones and prescriptions. basically a shortcut to get there faster on ground with no history. I did not know it correlated so strongly to yield maps.
I think I will try it on one farm and see what it does.
Thanks again. |
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Paradise KS | It dosen't correlate strongly everywhere....
In our area veris is virutally worthless, so are soil maps, which is basically what you get with veris. Yield monitors, grid sampling the first time, are best ways to find zones.
At the end of the day all that matters is yield....and what you spent to get that yield of course. |
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Paradise KS | I would argue that a grid sample would get you pretty dang close to that lime rec as well and you get much more information out of the money you put in. |
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n.c.iowa | Kossuth county. was talking with a couple local agronomists yesterday, they are going to retry the veris machines this year. something about a different calibration, or different sensor or something.
the one guys are running a om sensor in conjunction with the ec sensor, the claim it works better, but they still like to do bare soil imagery to develop zones. |
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SC MN | Compare a 2.5 acre grid lime rec to a veris lime rec. I've seen cases where the veris lime rec has saved $6,000 on one farm compared to the grid rec. |
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Paradise KS | The. My guess would be that the grid wasn't done right or the math to create the vrt Rex wasn't done right. |
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SC MN | Your guess is wrong in this case. |
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| yield and fertility will change, soil texture will not
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Paradise KS | Over 700000 acres says I'm not. |
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Paradise KS | Yields might change but when we're looking at yield maps we are looking at percentiles of yield not yield numbers themselves, this is how different crops can be used together to make yield maps.
We can agree to disagree but I will hold my position that getting yield data and grid data is first and foremost, then build from there, veris data alone just dosen't tell me enough and using the veris to create zones to sample isn't good enough for me either. |
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SC MN | We run a couple hundred thousand acres of recs a year. I guarantee you there are no mistakes in our equations or algorithms. Not sure what you're getting at with 700,000 acres? I'm not sure why you are even arguing this? 20 pH samples taken with veris per acre, versus 1 sample take in 2.5 acres on a soil test. You cannot even compare a grid map to a veris lime map. If you would run a rec side by side to compare the lime output, you would have a different tune. |
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Paradise KS | Yields might change but when we're looking at yield maps we are looking at percentiles of yield not yield numbers themselves, this is how different crops can be used together to make yield maps.
We can agree to disagree but I will hold my position that getting yield data and grid data is first and foremost, then build from there, veris data alone just dosen't tell me enough and using the veris to create zones to sample isn't good enough for me either. |
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SC MN | Also, since you appear to be an expert on the situation, you know that grid samples are done in parallel with the veris machine right? |
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| I take my Veris EC map, elevation map, yield maps, several years worth of aerial imagery, and any information i know about a field and sit down and start comparing everything. Lets me draw out zones that work. Say you have a spot that always drowns out and a hilltop thats pure sand, both might show the same yield year after year, but it doesn't mean they should be treated the same. One single layer of data is NEVER enough to make management decisions in my opinion. After you have zones that make sense to you and make sense to all the layers of data you have, then you can zone soil sample. I plug every part of the soil test into its zone and make map layers for N, P, K, pH, base saturations , etc. Then I can make my VR fert maps and plan population maps. You can end up with zones for high rates of fert and medium seed pop or low rates and high pop or any sort of combination. This year i have zones that will get no fertilizer whatsoever and some that will get high rates of N and no p or k. I do my own Veris mapping and it is not perfect data. you cant do it if the ground is too dry, or too wet, or too much trash on top... I've only done a few fields for others and I've had to wait for good timing and redo whole fields because I wasn't getting good enough contact to get consistent results. The stuff I did I charged $5 for with no recs or sampling. Just the raw data. I dont know if i could trust someone else to make my prescriptions.
I will say if done right the Veris data usually resembles a yield map, but there is always spots that just dont seem to make sense until you get other data layers into the mix
Edited by SC ND farmer 3/24/2017 22:17
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| im not going to change your mind thats clear to see as mine will not change neither, i must be seeing things that have not been shown to you.
grids, yield data, soil maps and imagery are the whole equation.
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Paradise KS | I agree with that last statement, to me veris/soil comes last. |
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Paradise KS | Some companies are doing grid in parallel but not all, very few if any in this area. They want to use it to create a couple zones and pull a few cores and call it good and the farmer is getting screwed. This is what most of the fly by night and pop up companies are doing because it's easy. Quantity over quality.
I guess I'm coming from the side that most of my potential customers don't want to spend the money as it is. Doing the 2.5 acres gets the most bang for the buck to get things rolling. If they have yield data we can use that then maybe ina couple years get them to do satellite imagery and then last would be veris data but by then we have enough data that I don't push veris data. |
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WC Mn/Dakotas | Its all about ROI. How good whatever data your using is, how much a field varys and why, how much treatments cost, and if the grower is willing to make such a big change. Lots of possible scenarios.
I have not done veris or em yet. Many i talk to say there are definite limitations to running veris or em. Many others that work extensively in mapping, with and without veris, say usually they can create a zone map with imagery, elevation, and yield that is identical to veris for a fraction of the cost.
The big question is what are you trying to use this for? Soil sampling, vrt fertilization, lime, seeding, irrigation? These in my opinion all need a variation of massaging different types of data layers.
I soil sample from 1 map, seed by a different one. Looking into vrt in tx panhandle and that looks to require a 3rd map. If your apply high dollar treatments more expensive, detailed maps can be justified. I dont have guys making those big $ decisions that would give grid sampling as big a roi as my zone sampling. Are my zones perfect- NO, neither is grid and its more expensive, much more if done as carefully as i zone sample. Actually, the previous data ive seen from fields im now zoning had lots of errors because 1 2.5 acre grid should have 2-3 zones in it. So more sample points is more accurate, but also more expensive.
A grided zone might be the ultimate. Precision Planting smart firmer might get the o.m. and moisture. Better aerial imaging might be a benefit. em coupled with ground penetrating radar might be a game changer. Veris pH might be the biggest factor to consider if done in the right conditions. |
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Paradise KS | I guess this is kinda what I'm getting at. From a company stand point veris can be difficult to work with and sometimes you can't be sure what it's really telling you. |
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Cost for Veris mapping? Does this sound right?
