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me. For the last few years, I have had a
number of on-farm trials on the go. each
trial is quite manageable on its own,
but seeding and harvest time really put
the pressure on. Spring tends to be the
worst. I can go weeks waiting to seed, and
then—boom—one day three producers
will let me know that they will be seeding
a trial in the next 24 hours. I maintain
close contact, knowing that in spite of all
the preparation something will inevitably
go wrong, and of course it does. usually,
it is a last-minute technological hurdle.
Sometimes the seeding prescription file
I wrote isn’t recognized by the farmer’s
equipment. Sometimes the software in the
tractor refuses to communicate with the
hardware in the equipment. Once there
was a single wire that had worn through,
rendering the equipment incapable of
receiving the information necessary to
carry out a trial. Through experience, a lot
of these wrinkles have been ironed out,
but we still have the occasional springtime
train wreck.
The GIS work and data analysis com-
ponent of my job is probably the most
challenging, but this work is typically
done in the off-season when fieldwork is
complete, so I have the luxury of time to
work through any issues that may present
themselves.
GW
: What’s your favourite part of
this job?
LB:
I love the days I spend outdoors. I
love being able to head out to a real field
somewhere and just spend a day in the sun
collecting data. And as much as seeding
and harvest time can be intense, being
able to ride along while a crop is being
seeded or harvested and getting to BS
with the farmer—it’s really a lot of fun.
GW
: What has been one of your biggest
frustrations working in this field?
LB:
data overload. With the data collec-
tion tools at our disposal and the capacity
to gather data quickly, easily and cheaply,
we tend to collect a lot more than we
need or can use. Sifting through all this
data and separating the real, usable
information from the noise can be a real
challenge. I will struggle for a long time
to fit a certain data layer into the puzzle,
only to conclude that it just doesn’t fit,
or that it isn’t relevant. Sometimes, too
much data can take me on wild tangents,
chasing interesting—but ultimately
inconsequential—patterns.
GW
: What do you see happening in five,
10 or 15 years, in terms of applications
for this technology?
LB:
That’s a tough question to answer.
With the tools of precision agriculture,
and the data-processing capacity of GIS
technology, there is real potential for
innovation. however, before we get there,
we need to be honest about what we do
and do not know, and about what we can
and cannot do. I spend a lot of time work-
ing to understand spatial variation of soil,
moisture and yield in a field, but there are
important temporal variations in weather
that really make it difficult to predict how
a crop will behave in a given year.
It may not be possible, but if some-
body can figure out how to accurately
predict the weather, and I mean months
in advance and at a regional scale, this
technology would really take off. Weather
variability really undermines our ability
to predict crop behaviour, and thus our
ability to precisely manage inputs to crop
productions.
The big answer for 10 to 15 years from
now is making certain farm tasks autono-
mous, such as giving farmers the capacity
to scout fields remotely with unmanned
vehicles and developing robots that can
recognize and terminate harmful plants
or insects as they appear.
GW:
What’s the one thing you wish
more farmers knew or applied about
GIS technology?
LB:
When it comes to the world of
precision agriculture and big data, I
think GIS is like a black box that spits
out information, but nobody is entirely
sure what is going on inside. The truth is,
there is no perfect algorithm that can tell
farmers exactly how to understand and
manage variability in their fields. GIS and
precision agriculture are tools—powerful
tools—that can help to better understand
our land and production, and can support
management decisions, but they need
to be married to good agronomy to be
effective.
Spring
2017
Grains
West
20
MAKING THE MOST OF MAPS:
Lewis Baarda’s work with Farming Smarter involves
a lot of data, whether he’s collecting it in a farmer’s field or interpreting it back at his
computer.