Using data to streamline decisions – Farmers Guide

The 1,619ha Farleigh Wallop Estate in Hampshire has long used data to drive its on-farm decision making. But a move to digital farming software, Omnia has helped to streamline day-to-day management and save costs.

The 1,619ha Farleigh Wallop Estate in Hampshire has long used data to drive its on-farm decision making. But a move to digital farming software, Omnia has helped to streamline day-to-day management and save costs

The estate’s soil types range from chalk to heavy clay cap, which allows for a varied crop rotation of milling wheat, malting winter and spring barley, HEAR oilseed rape, maize and beans. And there are plans to introduce potatoes for next harvest.

Cian Flavin, farm and estate project manager says: “Although we are growing crops predominantly for premium markets, each harvest year has its own challenges. It is important .we make sure we manage what we can and data helps us to do that.” Before making the switch to Omnia a year ago, the estate had been running on four different software systems – one for soil mapping and variable rate applications; one for spray records and IPM; an Excel spreadsheet for fertiliser recommendations and N-Max restrictions; as well as John Deere Operations Centre to track machinery and cultivation costs.

“The introduction of the spray module was the key thing to warrant us moving to Omnia and it is working really well for us,” explains Cian. “We have been able to amalgamate those four systems and have all that information and more in one place.

“Omnia has great API with John Deere Operations Center, and now we are creating variable rate application maps with Omnia, be it for seed, nitrogen, all the way through to liming, and we can just send them straight out through Omnia to the tractor doing that job.”

The switch to the software has been a fairly seamless one, with Cian having regular meetings with his local Omnia digital services specialist, Rowan Duckworth.

Cian also took the approach that if the estate was to go fully digital, the whole team should be on board, so Wi-Fi was fitted to the main. farmyard, with a central farm laptop given to the team, and each of the farm’s employees having the Omnia Scout app on their mobile phone.

“I try to run an open book with the team – giving them access to this information means they can see my logic in why we are doing things a certain way and they can see plans or tasks that need doing. I have found this takes the weight off me a little.”

With two new team members joining the team just before harvest this year, Omnia has also proved useful in helping them navigate their way around the estate.

“On the Scout app, they can pull up Google Maps to give them a route to a field or back to the grain store, which has been invaluable in their first week of not knowing their way round the estate,” says Cian.

The estate’s independent agronomist also has agronomy level access to the farm’s records, allowing for greater autonomy with Cian, who is BASIS and FACTS qualified himself, and his crop management plans.

“The team can sit down and provisionally plan the season to get an understanding of costs and where prices are looking for the springtime, as well as assessing how the crop and season is going before deciding applications. It has been very useful even for our agronomist to see which crop is coming next. Having that kind of clarity on what we are doing is helping them make better decisions on the ground.”

Omnia Business Manager provides live gross margins for everything from topping grass margins through to combining, which Cian has been using for budgeting.

“That has been key to finetuning our budgeting. Once we have for example applied the T1 to wheat, I can sit down with the agronomist and assess how the crop is looking and what potential is there, but then instantly look at where the gross margin is for the crop and take into consideration any indirect costs, such as cultivation passes, costs of drilling, applying slug pellets and so on.

“It has made me really mindful of recreational machinery passes, and how we can streamline operations so for example, applying 2-3 products as a tank mix and not having that extra spray pass.

“Another key part of this is the team on the ground buying into it – they can see that whatever they submit on Omnia Scout is what driving decisions for that crop. Their record keeping has to be as sharp as mine, as the manager.”