Mitigating input application risks
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Agworld
Tech Stack
- NDVI Imagery
- Digital Record Keeping
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Farm Monitoring & Precision Farming
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Data Science Services
About The Customer
Ben VanDyke is a third-generation farmer in Yamhill, Oregon. After taking over from his father and uncle in the early 2000’s, Ben now runs the family operation comprising several thousand acres of land of which 20% is irrigated. The farm used to only produce grass seed until Ben introduced blueberries in 2009 and added hazelnuts in 2015. The farm is located in a valley surrounded by vineyards, which can cause friction when grapevines get damaged by phenoxy drift or when certain pesticides drift onto their vineyards. VanDyke Farms is often blamed for such incidents due to their close proximity.
The Challenge
Ben VanDyke of VanDyke Farms needed a better way to track his input applications for certification purposes when he started to grow food crops next to his existing grass seed operation. The farm is surrounded by sensitive crops, which necessitates a high degree of caution when spraying and accurate input application tracking to prevent spray drift from occurring. The farm is often blamed for herbicide drift, even when they are certain it wasn't them. This necessitates having legal proof in case of an investigation. The farm also needed to create reports for GAP and other certification, which became important with the introduction of blueberries and hazelnuts.
The Solution
VanDyke Farms subscribed to Valley Agronomics' Platinum Precision Subscription with Agworld at the heart of it. Agworld helped them fulfill all their record keeping and application tracking needs, while the NDVI imagery component helped them with applying growth regulators on their grass seed. The farm uses Agworld daily, which makes it easy to have a quick look at the latest NDVI image whenever they want to. As soon as they see some problem spots on the imagery in Agworld, they can go into the field and try to figure out what the problem is. They also record every single detail from their input applications in Agworld, from the exact weather conditions to nozzle type, boom-height and all the other information that is available.
Operational Impact
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