NE South Dakota Clark, SD | SMS has some very good qualities. However creating great management zones is not one of them, unless you have many years of good yield data. Then it can be decent. Great management zones are made with many years of data. This averaging shows you trends of the field. If it has been broken up into different crops, it is even more work to get great zones. A quarter may need to be broken up into 2 -3 pieces to accurately create zones for sampling and RX due to different parts of the field not being farmed the same. This may be less of an issue in some parts of the county than my area.
Any farm software has a learning curve. What I think is easy to run, my be difficult for someone else. Plan to go to training classes if you want to get the most out of any software. I would also say that one touch easy button software packages are not going to create the best management zones for you. There is a difference between zones and great zones.
Yield data, satellite, and aerial imagery, Veris or EM38 soils data are all excellent pieces of the puzzle. Soils maps in many areas are a very poor resource as they are not very accurate. To make great zones you need to put the right puzzle pieces together. Their are also a lot of services out there if you do not have the technical aptitude yourself. Some are great, some are poor. You need to start out with great zones so you can manage them. If you have any questions my contact info is in my profile. |
SMS or not?
