Throughout
the existence of agriculture, one of the main issues of interest to farmers was
the issue of increasing crop yield. What are the best ways to increase crop
yield per acre? What are the factors that affect crop yield most?
Recently, in
view of the constant growth of the world’s population, this issue is becoming
more and more relevant.
However,
with the emergence of new challenges for agrarians, there are also new ways and
technologies appearing that are called to respond to them. This is what this
article is about: what growers can do for increasing crop yield on their
farmlands and what new technologies can help farmers in this matter.
What Is Crop Yield?
Crop yield is a standard measurement of the amount of agricultural
production harvested—yield of a crop—per unit of land area.
Crop yield is the measure most often used for cereal,
grain, or legumes; and typically is measured in bushels, tons, or pounds per
acre in the U.S.
Sample sizes of a harvested crop
are generally measured to determine the estimated crop yield for a larger
region.
Crop yield is the measure of seeds or grains which is
produced from a given land plot. It is usually expressed in kilograms per
hectare or in bushels per acre. Such an indicator as the average crop yield per
acre serves as the evaluation of a farmer’s agricultural output on a particular
field over a specified time period.
It is considered to be probably the most important
measure of each farmer’s performance, as it embodies the result of all the
efforts and resources invested by agrarians in the development of plants on
their fields.
Important
Facts to Know
· Crop yields refer to how much grain or other crops are
produced, and by extension how efficient land is used to produce food or
agricultural commodities.
· The U.S. Department of Agriculture takes samples and
estimates crop yields for nearly two-dozen crops in the United States.
· Crop yields and farm efficiency have increased dramatically
over the past decades as technology has advanced in farm automation, crop
genetics, fertilizers, and pesticides.
· The U.S. government also monitors crop yields of foreign
countries to help track their economic health. Several governments also publish
their crop yield reports to the public.
How Crop Yield Works
To estimate crop yield, producers usually count the amount of a given crop harvested in a sample area. Then the harvested crop is weighed, and the crop yield of the entire field is extrapolated from the sample.
For example, if a wheat producer counted 30 heads per foot squared, and each head contained 24 seeds, assuming a 1,000-kernel weight of 35 grams the crop yield estimate using the standard formula would be 30 x 24 x 35 x 0.04356 = 1,097 kg/acre.
Moreover, since wheat is
27.215 kg/bu, the yield we estimated would be 40 bu/acre (1097/27.215) or 40
bushels per acre.
Crop yield can also refer to the
actual seed generation from the plant. For example, a grain of wheat yielding
three new grains of wheat would have a crop yield of 1:3. Sometimes crop yield
is referred to as "agricultural output."
Get More out of your crops by Learning How to Improve Crop Yields Effectively
Crop yields are an essential aspect of every farmer’s
day, impacting how profitable their farmland can be.
Learning how to improve crop yields is key to successful
farming, and access to new technologies and planting methods has given farmers
an opportunity increase crop production – the key to maintaining the long term
sustainability of their farm.
Corn crop yield rates have steadily increased over time,
thanks to hardier corn hybrids and smarter planting practices.
Technologies that allow farmers to best understand their
soil, what kind of nutrients they may be lacking, and when to plant seeds have
positively affected outcomes.
To put it simply, planting has benefitted from the
introduction of science and technology in farming.
Why are Crop Yields so important to farming?
The concept of high-performance agriculture is key in
understanding the importance of crop yields. How much you can produce within a
given amount of land is essentially how efficient you are as a farmer.
In today’s economy, being able to do things efficiently
is as important as ever. You want to ensure that you are maximizing your space
and the land you have worked to cultivate. Crop yields not only determine your
efficiency, but your bottom-line as well.
What is the danger allied with attempting to improve crop yields?
Everything
you do on your farm has consequences, and in order to learn how to increase
crop production and crop yield, you will have to approach each decision with a
concentrated amount of study and analysis. This doesn’t mean that you can’t try
something, fail, and learn, but it does mean that attempts to increase
efficiency could affect your bottom line.
What are some ways to Improve Agricultural Productivity for your crop yield?
Consider
your crops like the ingredients in a recipe; the quality of your soil, your
seeds, and your planting practices will determine the overall strength of the
final product — the crops you are growing. Your crops benefits from using
strong hybrid seed with the strength to sustain conditions and maximize yields.
The science behind seeds has greatly improved, but there are still techniques
and methods to increase your overall efficiency on the farm.
15 Unique Ways to Increase Crop Yield
For
centuries, farmers have pondered over and worked on the issue of increasing
crop yields. Some of the solutions found were efficient and some were not.
Today,
in addition to the valuable experience of previous generations of farmers, the
agriculture industry can also benefit from the achievements of modern science
and technology.
Below
are the unique ways for the farmers to increase crop yields and see how
previous experience and advanced technology can be effectively combined to
improve agrarians’ performance.
1. Seeds Quality
Agricultural
productivity depends on the quality of seeds with which farmers sow their
fields. Therefore, in order to increase crop yield on their farmlands,
agrarians are recommended to sow only certified seeds that have passed all the
necessary quality controls. Certified seeds may cost higher than those that do
not have certification, but the result will be worth it, because the proper
quality of seeds is one of the main factors that affect crop yield.
Besides
that, planting only high-quality seeds represents one of the ecofriendly
methods to increase crop yield. If needed, a farmer can check the quality of
particular seeds by referring to a relevant seed company and requesting it to
conduct special trials on a given land plot.
Apart
from this, is it important to remember that the quality of seeds is not
something that is permanent and undamageable. Seed grains need protection from
the moment they are planted in the ground.
Seed
coating is one of the seed treatment techniques used to accomplish this. It is
the process of protecting seed grains with outer materials in order to improve
their characteristics (weight, size) and/or provide them with some active
compounds (micronutrients, microbial inoculants, growth regulators, etc.)
called to protect them against plant diseases and boost their growth.
2. Monitoring Crops Growth
From the early stage of development
through budding and up to harvesting, it is very important to monitor plant
health in order to timely detect any problem that can arise on a given farmland
(be it related to pest infestations, plant diseases, weeds, etc.) and that can
affect the crop yield.
Regular, for instance, allows
farmers to. The evolution of plant health status provides key information to
decide on possible interventions to the needs of crops.
Even though satellites do not
measure the stages of plant growth directly, but with spectral indices.
EOSDA Crop Monitoring also provides
data on daily temperatures, analyze their dynamics in time, and calculate their
total sum. Based on this data, software is capable of detecting growth stages for various types of plants and
represents their correlations with other data so that the farmers could make
well-weighted decisions.
Apart
from this, EOSDA Crop Monitoring provides agrarians with valuable data about
different vegetation indices, such as:
MSAVI–
Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (it is best to be used at the early
stages of crop growth)
NDRE –
Normalized Difference Red Edge Index (recommended to be used together with the
NDVI index)
NDVI –
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (recommended during the active stages of
crop growth)
ReCl –
Red Edge Chlorophyll (most relevant during early and active growth stages of
crop growth).
Read: Top Solutions to the Problems of Agriculture
3. Field Productivity
Zoning
Before sowing, it is important for a farmer to understand productivity of the
field that is to be sowed and, if applicable, define specific areas where
plants grow better. This process is called productivity zoning.
In
this way, a grower can plant seeds more densely in the areas with greater
productivity, potentially getting increased crop yield, and do not waste them
much in the zones with low productivity.
Also,
such zoning allows farmers to properly treat the field areas with lower
productivity and take all necessary actions to increase soil fertility and its
overall important characteristics to grow a particular plant.
Today’s
technologies allow farmers to carry out such productivity zoning of their
fields faster and more efficiently than before.
For
this purpose many agrarians use the EOSDA Crop Monitoring software. With its
high-precision technology and satellite-driven data, the growers can generate
field productivity maps based on the historical data and, thus, clearly
identify the areas with the highest and the lowest productivity on a given farmland.
4. Steady Scouting
Scouting
is one of the important parts of agribusiness management aimed to ensure proper
development of plants and increase crop yields. Often, when a grower has large
fields, it is difficult and non-effective to scout acre by acre, as it is
time-consuming and resource-intensive.
EOSDA
Crop Monitoring takes advantage here and offers convenient scouting task
management. Crop Scouting solution is intended to save time and replace a
tedious work of human experts on fields All that is needed to do is to long for
human experts on fields.
All
that is needed to do is to log into your Crop Scouting app, check for any
problem areas on your land plot detected by a satellite, tag these areas on the
map, and organize closer scouting of these specific zones.
The
scouts then proceed to problem investigation on the spot, make pictures, upload
them in the application, and enter necessary data in the relevant section. This
way, a farmer can create multiple scouting tasks simultaneously, easily
managing them and monitoring their completion.
Such
time effective and highly accurate field scouting solution assists agrarians in
their daily work and can help increase their yields.
5. Forecasting Crop Yield
Crop
yield prediction is very important for global production of food. Governments
all over the world use analytical data concerning crop yields forecasting to
take grounded decisions as to their national import/export operations.
Companies
specialized in seed breeding need to foresee how new hybrids will perform in
different climate and soil conditions to plan on further improvement of new
variations of seeds. Farmers, in their turn, take advantage of crop yield
prediction to make well-weighted agribusiness decisions.
One
of the latest trends in industrial agriculture is predicting crop yield with
remote sensing satellite data, which has already been proved efficient in
different corners of the globe.
It
is important to note, however, that the accuracy in crop yield estimation using
remote sensing depends on multiple factors, such as climate conditions (weather
extremes), soil health, pest infestations, etc.
Besides
that, an important decision-making role in agricultural risk management and
crop yield prediction is played by reliable historic records on yields in a
given field. At present time, various machine learning techniques for prediction
of crop yield are used all over the world. Crop yield prediction software
requires big amounts of input data, yet may sometimes be not fully accurate due
to possible fluctuations in weather conditions, for example.
6. Smart Combination Of
Agricultural
Efforts
Taking into account all the above, it could be said that there is no single and
universal method of increasing an average crop yield per acre on a farmer’s
land plot. In most cases, it is a smart combination of different agricultural
efforts that can vary depending on unique characteristics of a grower’s field.
It is yet worth noting that the EOSDA Crop Monitoring software can be of
considerable help for farmers with most of such agricultural efforts, assisting
them whether directly or indirectly through accurate monitoring of separate
agricultural activities and substantial facilitation of their implementation.
7. Precise Weather
Prediction
The
average crop yield per acre on a given field is very much conditioned by
weather factors. With the same quality of soil and the same species of seeds
planted, the climate conditions have a predominant influence on the development
of plants and, consequently, on yields. It is especially true when considering
how climate change affects agriculture in separate regions and on Earth in
general.
To
work efficiently and cooperatively with such an important but uncontrollable
factor as weather, farmers have an opportunity to refer to the newest
technological solutions that help them obtain accurate weather prediction.
For
example, the use of EOSDA Crop Monitoring software in precision weather
forecasts can help growers decide what ag practices they can perform.
Given
all this, it is worth noting that accurate weather forecasting in precision
farming can greatly contribute to increasing crop yields on a particular
farmland.
EOSDA
Crop Monitoring provides farmers with weather analytics that include current
and historical weather data, as well as forecasts up to two weeks ahead.
Also,
this software allows agrarians to detect the extreme weather states that can
affect crop yields:
a) Cold
stress
b) Heat stress
8. Smart Application Of
Fertilizers
Although
fertilizers are intended to nourish the various types of soil, boost plant
growth, and increase yields, their use should be balanced and prudent. Using
too much fertilizers can negatively affect the soil quality and, therefore, the
agricultural productivity.
Within
one field, different areas may have different needs for soil fertilization,
which is why the best solution here is to use fertilizers selectively,
depending on the need for them in different field zones. This accurate approach
to field fertilization helps keep the soil in good health, which helps increase
the average crop yield per acre.
One of the technological solutions in this context is EOSDA Crop Monitoring software. Based on satellite imagery, it has a field zoning feature which divides a farmland on 2-7 zones, identifying the areas that require more care than others. Such precision technology is often used by growers as one of the ecofriendly methods to increase crop yield.
9. Good Irrigation
Farmers who aim to increase an average crop yield per acre on their fields must have a streamlined irrigation system at hand. Providing the plants with the appropriate amount of water directly affects the development of plants and, consequently, the crop yields.
Effective irrigation of farmlands is closely
linked to weather forecasts. Today’s technologies – special applications and
software for farmers – provide access to hyper-local weather forecasting. It
opens the door for precision irrigation and allows agrarians to plan in advance
and organize irrigation of their fields in the most accurate and efficient
manner.
10. Plant Disease Prevention And Management
Another important threat to a grower’s agricultural output is represented by plant diseases. Depending on the type of plants to be grown on a field, farmers can use various plant disease prevention and management methods, like selecting disease resistant or disease tolerant varieties, treating seeds with fungicides, and applying pesticides, and other similar substances on developing plants.
Agrarians should pay special attention to using these or other methods
in time so that they have a maximum effect possible. It is very important to
remember that protecting plants in a timely manner is crucial for crop yield
per acre indicator – the sooner a problem is identified, the faster and easier
it will be solved and the fewer field acres will be affected.
11. Crop Protection Methods
Agrarians
aiming to increase crop yields must take care of impact of weeds, pests or
diseases on crop yield. Such substances are usually herbicides, insecticides,
desiccants, plant growth regulators, fungicides, adjuvants, etc.
In
general, there are various crop protection methods. Among the main ones are
weed/pest management and plant disease management.
12. Weed And Pest Control
Weed
control and pest management are the biggest challenges for farmers during the
growing season. A single weed, for example, can generate over 10 million weed
seeds, and if they are not managed in time, it can substantially decrease the
yields on a given field and create problems for years to come. Pest
infestations also require a comprehensive management approach from agrarians.
As pests are highly adaptable and fast-reproducing organisms that can threaten
the yield on a particular farmland, farmers must always be ready to respond to
the pest infestation issue in a timely manner.
13. Soil Testing & Its
Quality
The
quality of soil, i.e. its fertility, is one of the main factors that affect
crop yields. Apart from agricultural productivity, the soil quality also
influences the cost for a farmer to grow one or another plant, as some of them
require certain ratios of specific elements in the soil, like mineral
particles, organic matter, water, air, etc.
To
attain increased crop yields, on a given field plot prevents soil exhaustion
and breaks pest cycles, which will result in better agricultural output and,
therefore, will increase the average crop yield per acre.
Read On: Definition, Scope, Nature of Agricultural Economics
14. Practice Seasonal Soil
Rotation
When you are planting season-by-season, it is important to understand how planting recurring crops can affect your overall yield. Planting corn in consecutive years has been proven to be less effective for optimal yields. This means that corn-on-corn planting should only be considered when your soil conditions are strong enough, or your land mass is limited.
If you don’t have access to
either, you may need to consider planting alternative crops in alternating
years — such as soybeans. Planting an alternating crop helps to diversify the
demands on your soil. This results in crops that not only yield more, but
continually produce year in and year out.
15. Know the Yield
Potential
It is not just enough to plan your seeds and hope for the best, you should always be sure to understand your field’s growth potential. Understanding the kind of crops you’re planting, and the kinds of seeds you are using, is important when assessing yield potential.
Crop producers typically have an estimated idea of
the yield potential of their seeds. Understanding this will help manage not
only your expectations, but whether or not your yield potential is matching
your actual production.
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