The Virtue of Virtual – Precise
Helping farmers minimise the downsides, and increase the chance of making the right choice... ...
Making business decisions has always entailed a degree of risk, with the chance that any changes could cause either benefit or harm. Jonathan Wheeler weighs things up.
New tools are being developed that help farmers minimise the downsides, and increase the chance of making the right choice.
Among them is Hutchinson’s ‘Omnia’ digital business performance module, which can now help plan cropping and rotations, monitor multiple performance indicators and keep track of the farm’s carbon balance.
The tool enables them to create a ‘digital twin’ of their farm, on which they can test how any changes being considered might impact performance. It can additionally assess how any changes in cropping, or the establishment and management of crops, might alter the farm’s CO2 balance.
Users can also run a quick check to assess the impact that changing input prices might have, and adjust application levels to see what effect they have on yields, costs and margins.
MEASURING PERFORMANCE
The company originally launched the Field Performance Module in 2021, which gave users the ability to complete retrospective calculations of production costs, expressed in £/t; CO2/t and CO2/ha.
The new module enables them to look forward and incorporate this and other information into their planning.
Oliver Wood, head of Omnia, says:
“This is a web-based digital farming tool that enables users to import relevant data from various sources and use it to make management decisions.”
It can also enable them to record their compliance with legal responsibilities, such as NVZ legislation.
Some 4,000 farmers are already using it to manage one million hectares of land. He added that it can provide field-by-field – and part-field by part-field – analysis and enable them to assess how individual changes such as a switch in cultivations could affect the farm.
CONSIDERING FLEXIBILITY
Will Foyle, one of the company’s farm business consultants, says the tool suits an emerging trend:
“People are becoming more fluid with their rotations than they previously were, and there is more uncertainty about which is the right crop to grow.”
The tool could help guide them to the most appropriate solution for any individual farm or field, as well as deciding whether to put selected land and awkward field corners into environment schemes or continue cropping them.
They could also use it to run a range of ‘what if ..’ scenarios to test how management changes would affect the farm.
DECIDING TO GO DIRECT?
So, for instance, when testing how a switch to direct drilling might work, they could assess potential cost reductions, examining each field operation individually.
They could also check on the effect of changing levels of input use and see how yield reductions of 5% or 10% might affect the situation.
Changes can be assessed individually or in combination with others to assess what impact they would have on the business.
Introducing direct drilling is one scenario where he suggests some rigorous planning is needed.
And while many farmers had used Defra’s Farming Equipment Technology Fund to finance 40% of the cost of a direct drill, he points out the business still had to fund the remaining 60% of a high-cost machine:
“That is still a lot to fund and you should still ask yourself whether it is really the right thing for the farm.”
The tool does not try to assess things like the weather, which are too unpredictable, or soil type, which Hutchinsons says is generally reflected in the details of cropping.
It can bring the same detail to CO2 emission figures, breaking them down to ’emissions per machine pass’ or ‘per application of input’ level.
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