Farmer Networks Using on-Farm Data to Improve Crop Management.

Using modern precision agriculture and remote sensing technologies, farmers can collect a large amount of data about their soils, field topography, and crop yields. To utilize these multi-scale data of inhomogeneous veracity, farmers need management aid tools to make better data-driven site-specific decisions. The Iowa Soybean Association On-Farm Network organizes local groups of farmers, agronomists and other stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of farmer management practices as well as various technologies and products used in crop production.  On-line and GIS applications are used to collect and summarize data, perform quality control, and create summary reports for individual and groups of on-farm studies.  Multilevel analyses of aggregate data are used to estimate predictive probabilities of yield response to various inputs under different management practices, soil conditions, and weather scenarios. To help farmers quantify the risk in crop production and make better management decisions, the estimated predictive probabilities are then used to develop on-line decision support systems. Collecting, analyzing, and summarizing data from multi-year on-farm studies and sharing results among farmers and other stakeholders is one of the ways to use technology and data to better manage nutrients, crop protection products, and other crop management and environmental conservation practices.