About
Agroptimizer is a decision support tool that can help you understand how different management practices drive yield and profit on your farm. The tool combines historical weather data and crop management data to generate recommendations to optimize the entire cropping system for maximum yield and profit.
You can see how it works here and see real world results based on this tool here.
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Farming challenges:
As a farmer, every year you must determine your cropping system (combination of multiple management practices) months before planting. One place you may find information about best management practices is from replicated field trials in your area. One issue with such trials is that typically, one, two or three management factors are evaluated in a single field or just a few fields. It is assumed that the other management practices are similar to what you use in your farm. But this may not be realistic.
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Example:
A soybean trial in your region may have examined how different planting dates and maturity groups affected yield. The trial was performed a few years ago in a silt loam, using conventional tillage, 15-inch rows and 130K seeds/ac. The main soil type in your field is a clay loam, and you use no-till, 30-inch rows and typically plant 160K seeds/ac. You probably wonder if the results of that trial will be relevant on your farm.
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What about profit?
Even more important than yield, is the profit you can make when selecting management practices. Although high yield is necessary, the cost of the seed and other inputs and the projected crop selling price are very important variables. You know that these costs vary widely and can change from year to year. Therefore, it is important to perform economic analysis for each field, every year, before selecting a cropping system.
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Why use Agroptimizer?
Agroptimizer allows you to simulate the results of replicated trials like they have been performed on your farm for 5 consecutive years. The results are adjusted for your soil type, typical weather conditions and management practices you cannot or don’t want to change. Using data science and machine learning algorithms, we generated massive databases across the US.
Agroptimizer is the tool that was trained to evaluate all these potential cropping systems, perform economic analysis, and identify management practices with the greatest yield and profit potential for your farm.