Path to Precision
Action Plan Step 1: Assign Responsibility
11 Dec 2021
Assigning responsibility for your precision farming implementation is absolutely key – failing to properly assign responsibility is where the majority of precision farming adoption plans fail; you either get too many cooks in the kitchen, or no one at all! Get this step right and things will get a lot easier.
Responsibility doesn't have to be one single person doing everything—it could be a team of people—but the critical point is to ensure that whoever it may be wakes up every morning knowing that they are responsible for ensuring all facets of precision farming implementation are running smoothly.
So, what kind of facets are we talking about here? What would this person or team be responsible for, exactly?
Precision farming personnel are responsible for:
1. Company knowledge centre - The benefit of having dedicated personnel for a precision strategy is that they quickly become the knowledge base for everything to do with precision agriculture in your operation. They will engage with precision dealers, manufacturer specialists, operators and agronomists and will spend ample amounts of time on Google, YouTube and other social media channels researching what they need to know. Their focus will be to learn, learn, learn, and then share what they've learned.
2. Training - Being the farm knowledge base means that they also need to be responsible for training others, mainly operators. Machine operators are critical in any precision strategy as it all starts with them! If they get it wrong on the machines, this could have detrimental impacts later in the process, especially with data management. Remember: ‘rubbish in = rubbish out’! All staff involved should be educated on the specific role they have to play and actions they need to take.
3. Equipment maintenance - Faulty, damaged, or inaccurate equipment can lead to ‘rubbish in’. Your precision farming personnel need to ensure regular equipment checks, cleaning and calibrations are made. Are sensors working as expected? Is the GNSS signal set up? Data recording enabled? If there are problems, they need to take action and resolve them.
4. Primary liaison for all things precision-related – Is a precision specialist from a manufacturer visiting? Are agronomists looking to get some data from you? Need new agtech solutions? Whoever is assigned responsibility should always be involved with, if not leading, the interactions. Not considering the full process at any decision point can cause annoying and sometimes costly complications. Your precision farming personnel should be the primary precision contact.
5. Precision strategy roadmap and monitoring - So let's say you've decided that your first goal in your strategy is to accurately measure yield through yield mapping technology. Your chosen person or team should not only be involved in outlining the key roadmap milestones to achieve this, but also to monitor and ensure progress. They will be keeping an eye on the results and making changes if there are obstacles along the way because it’s their responsibility.
Precision farming and its strategies must be done with intent—you can’t just muddle along doing things the same old way, randomly throwing a bit of new precision farming technology whenever you remember. You need to know why you’re implementing precision farming and have a clear idea of your goals. Someone needs to know that they are responsible for the plan and lead the way.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to employ someone new solely for the purpose of managing your precision farming, but whoever is assigned responsibility needs to know the importance of sticking to the plan, and lead the team in making the changes needed to make precision farming work effectively. The need to be your champion of change!
The team at Case IH and our dealers are here to support you. If you have any questions, please get in touch!
Once you’ve assigned responsibility, your precision farming personnel can start the process of assessing your inventory.