b'Shawn Paget was hesitant to invest in potato yield monitoring at first. Six years later he says hed never go without it.PHOTO: HARTFELT IMAGES BY NATALIEa few of the questions Menkveld says growers shouldgrowers from monitoring yields.growers understand production and yield differences consider after reviewing data. The biggest thing is guys are hesitant of settingfrom one season to the next, and how their crop it all up. It takes time. My wife has been working onmanagement is affecting yield.SOFTWARE ADVANCES it steadily. Now were to a point where everythingIn the winter, Paget makes a point of going In the past, growers have been discouraged fromis there. Its just a matter of checking data andthrough all the reports and maps generated during adopting potato yield monitoring because the ana- tweaking little things. The initial hard parts alreadythe growing season. Reviewing the data for 40-odd lytic software was complicated and not user-friendly.done, he says. fields is time consuming, says Paget, and in future he That is not the case today. Yield data files areBefore beginning to collect any data in-season,may hand this task to a professional, who can compile basically spreadsheets and the data is simple andPaget recommends growers set up GPS displaysmaps, reports and prescriptions for his crops.ready to use.correctly. You want your fields named properly, soMenkveld also recommends if growers feel they The software converts this data into clear,its easier for the operator to change fields. dont have the time or knowledge to get the best easy-to-read maps and reports, which farmers orYield data provides instant results, but thoseinformation from the data, that they hire an agrono-agronomists can use to make agronomic decisions.results year over year keep providing more in-depthmist or someone specialized in doing that job. Even if they arent currently using the data, bothinformation to growers. Paget says its important to be completely com-Paget and Menkveld encourage growers to collect theYou can benefit from a yield map immediately.mitted to the technology and collecting data. Hes data as they may need it in the future. You can look at a yield map after one year and un- currently set up to keep all records and data in one Almost all agronomists and crop input specialistsderstand whats happening in your field much bettersystem, which has been a successful platform for can accept yield monitor data, says Menkveld, andthan if you did not have that yield map. What youhim and other growers he knows.will happily work with growers and their data todo with the data and understanding the importanceTheyre doing their planning, spray records, improve crop productivity.of the data, and what the data is telling you, thatsoil analysis, et cetera, in one system, and this yield Software can now make comparisons of yieldprocess is for years. The value comes in repeating themonitor is just another partit finishes the system. data from multiple crop types. This is something Pa- process, says Menkveld. Thats the way it works for me, too, says Paget. get finds particularly useful. When I look at my farm,Equipment companies have developed technologyWhen we would go through the fields every year, I can see its whole history. Potatoes this year, all thethat will automatically upload data to a cloudwe would say thats a poor spot and we would never spray records, everything we put into it. I can go backplatform where it can be processed later for moreknow how much or why. But with a yield monitor you to the 2018 crop when I harvested corn, soybeans orintensive investigation of the numbers for comparingcan pick that exact zone out and you can find out grain, or to 2017 and find all of that information. yield maps year to year and from one crop to anotherwhy. Paget says its the initial set-up that may stopin the same field. Overlaying these maps helps FALL 2019 SPUDSMART.COM 59'