Agriculture is one of many industries going through digital transformation to realise new levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability. Digital tools and data science are accelerating agricultural innovation and delivering deeper insights to farmers that help drive agronomic and business decisions.
Climate FieldView™ is a global leading platform that helps farmers simplify their operations, improve profitability, manage risk, and address variability, as well as farm more efficiently and sustainably. This platform provides powerful and easy-to-use tools to collect and analyse data. As a result, farmers have tangible data to drive decisions which improves cost savings and profitability.
With the launch of Climate FieldView in South Africa in March 2021, Bayer is excited to showcase the possibilities this platform holds for the agricultural industry in the country. Data collection has always been an integral part of the decision-making process on farms. Until recently, farmers have struggled in two key areas: compiling that data and examining it to extract meaningful insights. Through its two mobile apps (FieldView and FieldView Cab app) and desktop experience (www.climatefieldview.co.za), the FieldView platform delivers seamless data collection, visualisation and analysis to help farmers and their agronomic advisors make more informed decisions.
“No longer can a grower afford to put the same investment for inputs on a single rate across the field. He will simply not enjoy a return of his investment at the same level across the field, so why not use technology and FieldView to better plan how you want to invest in your soil?” says Hugo le Roux, Climate FieldView Field Product Specialist.
On most farms, the operations are shared across multiple brands of equipment. The landscape is diverse and farmers need a single data platform to handle all the different sources of data. Farmers, in many cases, have several brands and each has its own platform, but now with FieldView, data from all the farmer’s equipment can be read into a single platform through the Climate FieldView™ Drive device, a piece of hardware that farmers can plug into the diagnostic port of their tractor, sprayer or combine.
The FieldView Drive uses bluetooth technology to stream agronomic data from their farm equipment to an iPad® in the cab. That data can then be visualised instantly through the FieldView Cab application, providing farmers with the ability to analyse their data in real time as it populates in the cab. “With the FieldView Cab app, farmers can also set important notifications to manage sensitive operations like planting. For instance, a farmer will receive text notifications if the planter's performance in areas like ‘Good Ride’, ‘Singulation’ and ‘Planter speed’ stray from the parameters he/she set,” says Hugo.
One of the big advantages of the Cab app is that it allows for remote viewing of equipment. With the iOS device, a farmer can connect and view performance in the Cab from anywhere in the world, if there is a good signal connected to the internet from both devices.
While the ability to stream data saves farmers time by quickly providing access to their machine-generated data, the FieldView platform also provides valuable agronomical tools like regular satellite imagery for scouting and scripting features to write variable rate prescriptions for seed, fertiliser, and crop protection products.
“Writing prescriptions was always out of reach for most farmers due to expensive software that was complex to use,” explains Hugo. “Now with FieldView, we are empowering the farmer to take control of his own data and decide who he would like to share it with and for how long. The farmer is now in total control of his own data.”
According to Hugo, one of the most crucial benefits of the Climate FieldView platform, is the safe storage and accessibility of data and the shareability thereof with agronomic advisors.
“FieldView is a geospatial platform and data analysis engine. If farmers collect their data with the FieldView Drive then the data is immediately secured in the cloud for storage and analysis. A farmer will never lose his data, it is always available for download and sharing with his/her agronomic advisors.”
Furthermore, this also acts as a time-saving tool as all the data that is saved on one platform under the same boundary, allows for powerful cloud analysis to provide deep insights on the performance of hybrids, fertilisers, and chemical applications.
“FieldView provides a holistic approach to data management, and farmers can now capitalise on all the investments made in sensors and data collected by their machinery on one easy to use platform which will help them not only save money but also make important operational decisions using data,” says Hugo.
The ability to interact with agronomic advisors is integral to driving a sustainable, profitable farm. The FieldView application allows you to liaise with your agronomic advisors in seed, fertiliser, and chemical applications.
“Farmers can drop field pins with GPS, write notes and share all of this with their advisors. If he shares his account in account settings, his advisors can also interact with the account directly to disperse advice around scouting efforts. The platform makes it easy for a grower and his advisors to connect and share data. Only in the FieldView application can a grower compare multiple-year analysis and compare different geospatial layers across different seasons,” says Hugo.
