Using Data to Increase Certainty Around Your Nitrogen Application Decisions.

Deferring your nitrogen management decision-making can mitigate your risk throughout the growing season. Even if conditions rapidly change, splitting your nitrogen applications can help you retain flexibility and protect your yield potential. 

But how do you actually time those applications — not just to mitigate risk, but to truly optimize your opportunities? What tools can you use to improve that planning process and be more confident you’re making the right decisions? 

Data plays a critical role in boosting this certainty — as long as you know how to use it. 

The role of certainty (or lack thereof) in nitrogen management 

As a crop progresses, you’re going to have higher and higher certainty about what that crop’s outcome will be. 

• Pre-planting: virtually 0% certainty. Before seed gets into the ground, you just don’t know how things are going to go. (An understatement!) This is especially true for rainfed systems. Irrigated systems do take away some water variability, so optimistically, let’s say you have 20-30% certainty about how that crop will turn out. 

• Basic pollination → reproductive growth stages: increased certainty. As a growing season progresses, there are fewer variables to wonder about. It either rained, or it didn’t. There was either a tar spot outbreak, or there wasn’t. Whether the variables turned out good or bad, you’ll at least know what happened. 

• Maturity: 90-95% certainty. At the end of the growing season as you wait on harvest, there are only a couple variables: weather, of course, and potential lodging. But for the most part, you’re confident in what that harvest is going to look like. 

For most crops, this certainty curve upward aligns pretty well with the nitrogen uptake curve. Take a look at this chart: 

How to align nitrogen management decisions with the certainty curve 

The goal, then, is to align nitrogen management decisions with when you have the most certainty about how the crop will turn out. 

There are two strategies to do this — which can (and should) be done concurrently: 

1. Split nitrogen applications. The less time you spend in an “all eggs in one basket” strategy — like applying all your nitrogen at the beginning of the season — the more you can flex with the season’s conditions. 

More flexibility = better response to a changing environment = more certainty your management decisions will improve your crop. 

2. Incorporate data into the decision-making about those split applications. With more data, you can improve your predictive modeling — and push your certainty curve forward.

There’s a big challenge with this second strategy, though. Effectively collecting, storing, organizing, and using data is a massive hurdle — not just for farmers, but for nearly every industry. 

• Data is often housed in multiple systems. 

• Maybe you’re not sure which data to collect.

• Once you do have the data, you don’t know what to do with it.

So, if you’re a farmer who wants to leverage data to improve decision-making (and certainty) around your nitrogen management … how do you actually get started? 

Types of data that can inform nitrogen management application decisions

Before you can utilize data, you’ve got to collect it. More specifically you need to collect helpful data. 

There are a few buckets of data that can inform nitrogen management application decisions, when collected (and used) properly: 

• Weather data: 14-day forecasts, historical weather data and trends

• Crop data: planting date, maturity and pollination info, seeding rates and depth, application logs

• Soil data: soil organic matter, electric connectivity, pH, chemical/physical properties, soil texture classes

• Topographical info: elevation, slope

• Imagery data: (This is the most important data that our N-Time software leverages

If these lists feel overwhelming — and you’re still not sure what to actually do with all that info — don’t worry. You can take a couple simple steps. 

How to improve data collection and usability to improve certainty and nitrogen management

1. Decide what kind of data manager you want to be

Agriculture has evolved a lot over the last decade. Even in the past handful of years, data in ag has accelerated extremely quickly. How farmers of the future handle all the data streams available to them will make a big difference in the success of their operations. 

There are a few different tiers of data management on the modern-day farm: 

• Pencil and pad: Operators who keep track of crop data, nitrogen applications, etc by hand

• Technology adopters: Growers who use a handful of platforms to automatically (and separately) collect data. For example, John Deere Ops Center for agronomic and machine data, Climate FieldView for field data, and FieldNET for irrigation management.

• Upper-tier managers: These farmers consolidate as many of these different records and data streams as they can into one system. That system then processes all the raw info and transforms it into actionable insights.

2. Improve your soil data collection 

One easy first step is to work with a soil sampling or soil mapping provider. Choose someone who can georeference those soil samples, then integrate them into a digital system. 

Many of our certified Sentry Network reps, for example, offer soil sampling, soil moisture probes, and other helpful data gathering technology.

3. Let technology do some of the work for you

You’re not alone if you think integrating and managing a bunch of different data streams is too much work. That’s why finding a system that consolidates all this info — and transforms raw data into something you can actually use to make more informed decisions — is so vital. 

With better data collection and consolidation, you can also: 

• Glean more actionable insights from all the info you gather at your operation

• Spot trends over time

• Reduce your time burden and allow automatic integration to take over any data input work you’re doing

The self-fulfilling prophecy of good data 

While it might feel uncertain or confusing to adopt new methods of data collection, or try to figure out the data you already have… 

This information, used properly, can all push you towards a higher level of certainty about your crop. 

• The more data you collect… 

• And the more data you feed into a system that can crunch all of it… 

• The “smarter” that system will get…

• And the better recommendations it will give…

• Which means you’ll make better decisions…

• And get better results. 

Then, the more data you collect about positive yields, the more you can feed it right back into the system — and start the whole cycle over. 

This cycle improves that certainty curve — and helps you better align your nitrogen management decisions with the natural in-season evolution of a crop’s potential.

If you’re interested in how N-Time software can help you enhance your data collection, turn existing data into actionable insights, and improve your overall nitrogen management decision-making, reach out to our team today.