Field Variability reads the crop's vigor gradient every week of the season and writes it out as management zones and a rate file your controller can run. You keep the rate call.
Schematic only. Not a field we mapped.
01The job today
You build the script at your desk from what's on file: yield maps, the soil survey, EC, a sampling grid. Those zones go out and stay in place through the season.
Then the grower calls in June and says the north end doesn't look like the map. The crop on that end has moved on since the zones were set, and the sidedress script still treats it as the same ground. So you redraw by hand, or you fall back to a flat rate and hope the field averages out.
02Comparison
| Row | Step | Zones drawn by hand | With Field Variability | Still yours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Drawing the zones | You draw them in your farm management software from yield history, soil layers and sampling results. They usually stay as drawn for the season. | Zones come from this week's vigor and biomass read over each field boundary you send, so they follow what the crop is doing now. | Yield history, soil tests and everything you know about the field. You decide what a zone means agronomically. |
| 02 | Setting rates by zone | You type a rate into each zone, product by product, or you run one flat rate. | You tell us your base rate and the rate bump for low, medium and high zones. The file carries a rate for every zone. | |
| 03 | Getting it into the cab | Export from your software, convert for the grower's controller, rename, send, and hope the terminal reads it. | The prescription file is written for the controller format the grower runs, agreed per grower before the first pass. | Loading it and checking it on the monitor before the machine moves. |
| 04 | Talking to the grower | A call built from a field walk and the last pass you looked at. | A one-page memo each week: what changed since last week and which zones moved. | |
| 05 | Signing off the rate | You review the script and make the final call. | You review the script and make the final call. The zone map and file are a draft to react to. | The rate itself. Nothing here approves an application. |
03What you get
Files per field, once a week through the growing season, ready to sit beside what you already keep on each grower account.
Encl. 1
Each field split into management zones from that week's vigor read. It backs the Drawing the zones row, and it opens in the GIS or farm software you already use.
Ledger row 01
Encl. 2
The rate script for seed, fertilizer and chemical, one rate per zone per product, exported in the format the grower's controller reads. It backs the rows on rates and the cab.
Ledger rows 02, 03
Encl. 3
What changed in vigor since last week and which zones moved. Written for your weekly grower call.
Ledger row 04
04How it works
You send the fields once. Zones and files come back each week.
Before the first pass
Field boundaries for the grower account, plus the controller and format each grower runs.
Your base rate and rate bump per product. You stay in charge of them, and you can change them any week.
Every week in season
A medium-res multispectral pass over the fields, compared with the week before. The vigor and biomass gradient sets the zones.
Zone map, prescription file and memo, each week of the season.
After the season
Weekly runs end with the growing season. There are no off-season reads.
05Limits
Read these before you script a pass from the file.
At 3–10 m a pixel is large. Very small or irregular patches inside a field can fold into their neighbors, and the memo flags where that happened. Soil sampling and a walk of the field still find things a satellite pixel won't.
The imagery is optical. If cloud covers a field on every pass that week, that field waits for the next clear pass and the memo says so.
Runs are weekly during the growing season. This gives you nothing for off-season zone work such as post-harvest sampling or next year's plan.
The zones follow how the crop looks. They don't predict yield, and we publish no yield-lift figure. The memo reports what changed, not an outcome.
Format support is confirmed grower by grower and OEM by OEM. Don't assume a file loads in every cab out of the box.
06Who it's for
07FAQ
No. You keep the software for records, boundaries and as-applied maps. The zone map and prescription file come in from outside and load into it.
Put them next to your own yield maps, soil tests and what the grower sees in the field. If a zone looks wrong, send it back and we'll go through that week's imagery with you.
It depends on the grower's controller and OEM. We confirm the format with each grower before the first file goes out, and we don't claim universal support.
That week's read waits for the next clear pass, and the memo tells you which fields it applies to.
3–10 m per pixel. That follows gradients across a field. Tiny or irregular patches can merge into their neighbors.
No. The memo reports what changed in vigor. It makes no promise about outcome.
Weekly during the growing season. There are no off-season reads.
Your boundaries and rates stay yours. The licence on the imagery behind the maps and how you may share the files get written into the project agreement before the first week.
We quote a project after we've seen the fields. There's no price list on this page.
Reply slip
Send the boundaries and tell us the controller. We'll scope the weekly zone run from there.
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