The Agronomic Content of U2U's Climate Responsive Decision Tools.

Successful use of the decision support tools in farm management lies at the intersection of weather, agronomics, and economics.  The five decision support tools currently developed by the Useful to Usable initiative integrate useful weather and climate data to make agronomic and, ultimately, economic farm management decisions usable by growers and crop advisors.  The tools either influence agronomic decision-making or require agronomic inputs to influence economic decisions.  Each tool uses agronomic information in a different sense to influence farm management.

The Ag Climate Viewer tool contains historic weather data and crop yields which can be overlaid to analyze temperature and precipitation effects on grain production over the course of the growing season.  In the event where certain trends are found to exist commonly, agronomic decisions including seed variety selection, irrigation scheduling, and crop rotation may be affected.  The Climate Patterns Viewer decision support tool analyses common climate oscillation effect on corn yield.  Because these oscillations can be predicted with some certainty well in advance of their occurrence, the tool may be used during the winter season to help farmers plan for the coming crop year.

The Growing Degree Day tool is steeped in agronomic input and decision-making.  Required inputs of corn maturity rating, degree days required to various growth stages, and planting date allow the user better decide growing windows for corn in the Midwest, bounded by freeze conditions in the Spring and Autumn seasons.  The ability to vary the inputs allows for comparison of the interaction of these agronomic inputs for a chosen county in the Midwest.  The Split N tool uses machinery, farm management style, and crop reporting day inputs to estimate the financial implications of sidedress nitrogen application.  However, the tool is also valuable in timing the estimated growth stage of the corn plant for timely application.