Technology is providing increasingly available ways to both assess variation and to respond to it. If you don’t hang around the crop guys very much you may not know that they now have at their disposal some remarkable ways to respond to variation in soil type, elevation and drainage issues when planting and harvesting fields.
GPS systems coupled with satellite photos, soil maps and elevation map layers are providing the modern cropping system with a means to deliver a more ideal seed density, fertilization rate and treatment distribution as well as capture yield monitoring data dynamically as fields are planted, tilled and harvested. These systems allow the producer to automatically distribute fertilizer for instance in an infinitely variable dose to fields based on the crop planted, the previous crop planted, the soil type and the elevation of the land being driven over. Delivery nozzles are calibrated on the fly in response to GPS location and layers of related maps.
