Dear Members,

The Precision Agriculture Research Association (PARA) has been in existence since the spring of last year as a private, non-profit organization. PARA was developed because producers in the Northern Great Plains are becoming increasingly interested in technology and the results that Midwestern farmers are achieving with precision agriculture tools and techniques. With such significant differences in climate, crops and management approaches, the benefits of adopting these technologies in our region are not known. The challenges are individual, and the bottom line is unique for each operation. PARA is in place to help members understand how precision agriculture technology might improve their bottom line and provide a little fun in the process.

PARA creates settings where producers join with research institutions, industry and each other to extract value from information and technology. Information and technology change so quickly that new partnerships and alliances are being formed in every industry just to keep pace with the competition; production agriculture should be no different. PARA producers could seek answers by linking with university researchers, students and industry technologists for some farm-scale evaluations and some fun. A PARA farm or ranch will use, independently test and evaluate technologies. PARA will share outcomes with members in future newsletters as well as through presentations at grower meetings. Cooperators featured in the newsletter may also be contacted directly.

Sincerely,

Paul Reep
Milestone Technology, Inc.
President, Precision Agriculture Research Association

PARA Special Projects

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The Precision Agriculture Research Association has endorsed and is interested in participating in the following projects because of its interest in improved product quality. In order to learn more about these proposals or current projects, contact cerlien@montana.edu.

Grain Quality Initiative Utilizing New Precision Farming Technology

PARA recently advanced a Special Initiatives proposal on the subject of grain quality improvement. This project, funded, will work closely wheat/barley producers to evaluate new crop quality sensors to help improve farm income by better managing crop quality and nitrogen.

This project plans to demonstrate a newly developed grain quality analyzer that has been under field and laboratory observation by Montana State University. Producers may use this analyzer to identify areas of high and low protein in their fields, thereby redirecting their fertilizer. The analyzer may also be used to separate high and low quality grain so that the producer can fetch a premium for the higher quality grain.

Fund for Rural America: Consortium for Site-Specific Management

One of the goals of the Consortium is to assess the potential of precision agriculture practices for improving crop quality. Work in Montana will focus on wheat, testing a new precision N management strategy that uses on-the-go yield sensing and grain protein levels to derive maps for N fertility requirements. Another of the Consortium goals is to create local precision agriculture learning teams, in which local producers will work in conjunction with Consortium members to design experiments, sample, analyze data, and make management decisions.

Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC)

The members of the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium are drawn from universities in North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. UMAC hosted a conference in February at Montana State University in Bozeman. UMAC is interested in producers’ desires for access to new technologies, and a large segment of the conference’s discussion time was devoted to this topic. UMAC also wants to create learning teams that would work together to apply remote sensing technology for management issues.

Producer's Corner

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By Janice and Carl Mattson

Introduction:

Carl and Janice Mattson operate a dryland cereal grains farm located north of Chester, Montana. They installed a GPS (Global Positioning System) base station on their farm in 1995. Its original purpose was to help them relocate wild oat infestations in their blocks of acreage, land which had previously been farmed in "strips". Since then they have used the system to aid them in their crop scouting, locating weed infestations, yield mapping, field boundary mapping, application of herbicides, plus many other mapping projects that continue to develop.

Site-specific farming activities:

Since 1995 we have had several GPS related projects working with Montana State University and its Extension Service. Our initial involvement began in 1995 with a Phosphorus study on our farm working with Dr. Dan Long from the Northern Montana Research Station near Havre, Montana. It has been our work with Dr. Long since then, varying Nitrogen rates, and developing yield and protein maps that has encouraged us to pursue the use of the GPS technology in site specific farming. This year Dr. Long has made possible a wild oat study, comparing different techniques of mapping wild oats and the effectiveness of each technique. This sounds very encouraging, providing us as producers, with the best approach, effectively and financially, in combating this weed.

Dr. Bruce Maxwell, of MSU, with the help of his graduate students, has spent much time mapping identifying sawfly and wild oat infestations on our farm. The information he collected has been compared to the yields mapped in that particular area by Dr. Long. The work has been a combined effort between producers, university, and extension. It is an ongoing project which has provided us with an enormous amount of information about both the sawfly and the wild oat.

Presently, we are involved with a number of researchers from MSU in an attempt to make use of all the digital information we can gather to help us derive a fairly accurate soil map of our farm. Our goal is to assemble as much outside digital information as possible, and use it all to provide us with enough information to make some management decisions regarding our farm.

Our hope is that the organization, PARA, is able to bring us as producers, interested in and using the GPS technology and its tools, together to share what has worked and what has not worked for each of us. We feel this sharing of experiences would be an incredible time saver and hopefully, decrease the frustration level for us all. We would like to see PARA used as a tool providing us with a means for communication, education, and financial support in making some of the site specific technology available to more producers in Montana.

We cannot thank the University System and all of its counterparts enough for all the help they have given us in accomplishing the goals we have set and achieved thus far. We look forward to working with PARA as a producer’s organization.

Janice and Carl may be contacted at geoag@cybercen.net

Master Calendar

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First International Conference on Geospatial Information in Agriculture and Forestry
June 1-3, 1998
Lake Buena Vista, Florida
http://www.erim-int.com/CONF/ICGIAF/Aghome.html


Field Days in Montana
June 24 - Fields of Tomorrow, Moccasin
July 14 - Central Ag Res. Ctr., Moccasin
July 15 - Northern Ag Res. Ctr., Havre
July 16 - Western Ag Res. Ctr., Corvallis
July 23 - Eastern Ag Res. Ctr., Sidney


4th International Conference on Precision Agriculture
July 19-22, 1998
Radisson Hotel Saint Paul
Saint Paul, Minnesota

For conference content information, contact:
Dr. Pierre Robert, Chair
Phone: (612)625-3125, FAX: (612)624-4223
E-mail: probert@soils.umn.edu

*For other information, contact:
Tracy Svee, Program Coordinator
Phone: (612)625-8215 or (800)367-5363
FAX: (612)625-2207, E-mail: tsvee@mes.umn.edu
http://precision.agri.umn.edu/98conf


Western Precision Agriculture Conference
Tentative Date: December, 1998
http://www.eus.wsu.edu/c&i/programs/precisionag.htm


Montana Grain Growers Committee Meeting
December 2-4, 1998


2nd European Conference on Precision Agriculture
July 11-15, 1999
Odense Congress Centre, Denmark
www.sri.bbsrc.ac.uk


NCR-180
NCR-180 is a committee of researchers from land grant university experiment stations who are working in precision agriculture. Committee members prepare annual research summaries which are organized below by state. Montana State University plans to host the national meeting in 2000.
http://precision.agri.umn.edu/html/research.html


Center for Precision Agriculture
Host for NCR-180 sit: *lots of info*
http://precision.agri.umn.edu/

For membership or other information: Contact: Bruce Wright at osmose@aol.com or Chris Erlien at cerlien@montana.edu