I’ve heard it from a number of industry people over the years, but the general consensus is that a farm manager will have 20-25 years to hone their craft before retiring or handing the reins over to the next generation. So, unless you’re in horticulture, those 20-25 circles around the sun reflect the number of cycles (e.g. crop, gestation period) that a manager has direct influence over. Sounds short to me!

For me, the conclusion of the 2024 review season gives pause to reflect. No doubt the season gone has been extremely challenging for many, but it is the 2024 outlook with continued growth in the cost of ‘operating’ overheads (repairs, tyres, insurance) that has many businesses operating on historically thin margins. Cost reductions on overheads are often hard fought or require a change in risk approach. So, in this setting, what levers do we have to improve farm operating profitability?

One of the most important levers sits in improving the returns on the fertiliser, chemical and seed inputs that are the drivers of production on every farmed hectare. Whether that be cropping or pasture systems, the application of these inputs has the potential to create additional grain or biomass but it’s certainly not guaranteed. The degree to which this potential translates to actual production is affected by a raft of factors, and it’s one of the hallmarks of successful farm business.

Thankfully, modern technology provides growers with a wealth of data that can help inform these decisions, with each unique growing season providing an opportunity to build on this database of knowledge, providing direct feedback on the profitability of different decisions in any given paddock under varied environmental conditions.
The question is, are you using your data effectively?

Yielding more than just grain
Yield data is almost universal in farm businesses, and while the quality and resolution of this data varies, it is the best available source of truth for the income generated on every hectare of the farm.

Have you reviewed your yield maps for the 2023/24 season?
Whilst you may have drawn a line through last year and moved on, we know that each season brings different conditions that provide valuable feedback on the return on inputs between and within fields. Spatial differences might be related to a strip of timely rain, it might be soil type, or it might be an interaction between underlying conditions AND inputs.
It’s worth investigating the likely underlying cause if;

• There are areas within paddocks that outperform (or underperform) others year on year.
• There are areas within paddocks that showed pronounced yield differences in one year.

Whether it’s waterlogging, frost, soil type, soil depth or disease, the mix of yield-limiting factors is unique to every farm property and enterprise mix. Identifying and ground-truthing causes of yield variation is the first step in harnessing your on-farm data for profit, which then provides the opportunity to tailor inputs to the likely yield potential.

Inputting inputs
Setting aside intricacies of grain quality, harvest yield data is an excellent measure of spatial income variation within fields and across farms, it’s very useful, but it is only half of the equation.
The challenge for many producers is the collection and organisation of data on paddock costs.

Platforms such as Agworld are fantastic planning tools, with the ability to generate accurate cost estimates at a paddock level, when linked to an agronomy plan with up-to-date costs factored in.
For many, the challenge is in recording accurate ‘as applied’ data in a data-friendly format. Not to throw shade at the trusty spray book, but it’s hard work to translate written text into data that is valuable to decision-making. Where yield data is almost a byproduct of harvest, collection of accurate input data often requires manual entry and consequently, time.
Several platforms exist to record input data in a format that feeds into decision-making, each has strengths and weaknesses but typically has similar output when it comes to yield analytics and paddock profitability. A review of these platforms is worthy of a Landline article in itself, but the key point is understanding the actual costs associated with individual operations and inputs at a paddock level.

Expanding knowledge
As single-year data, the value of detailed input costs and paddock profitability is limited by the amount of variation that you’re able to capture in that year. Most businesses will test out a new wheat variety in a fair, side-by-side comparison prior to rolling it out broadly across the program, yet it seems that farmers are much less likely to compare the effect of half/double rates of seeding fertiliser in a given year.

While the need to bulk up seed for the following year means that new varieties are planted, the additional effort required and often intangible gains mean that other ‘trials’ are often dropped or forgotten when the pressure comes on. The real cost of this is the opportunity to better understand and adjust the profit drivers of production in the soils, technology environment and unique management of a farming system.

Thankfully, technology is making it easier than ever to implement and track on-farm trials across paddocks and farms, lowering the effort required to implement and record trials, whilst improving insights from the data.

With many modern seeding bins and fertiliser spreaders now integrated with Variable Rate Technology, growers have the option to pre-define strip trials, with prescription support through John Deere Operations Centre and other equivalent platforms. If not using a Planfarm Agronomist, your local Precision Ag specialist is the go-to person to help plan trials and create prescription maps if you don’t feel confident to do so.

In practice, creating your own data might be as simple as turning the fertiliser down and up on every 10th seeder run, putting coated urea through a repeated, side-by-side comparison with the conventional or switching off the last fungicide for a few strips.

Another lap around the farm (and sun)
With seeding upon us, now is the opportunity to put plans in place for the coming season, what productivity response are you interested in testing this year?
You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and without data you’re only really making an educated guess at the profit drivers of your system. Insights that inform farm decisions for 2025 and onwards will come from your actions now-, so worry about the measuring later and get out and toggle those input controllers.

Resources:
Curtin University On-Farm Experimentation Project (Case Study): https://www.foodagility.com/documents/case-study-booklet-on-farm-experimentation