Lesson #10: Importing Yield Data This lesson introduces students to the steps of importing harvest yield data from a Case IH yield monitor. Yield monitors provide the first level of precision agriculture. It takes harvest information from a combine and integrates GPS to provide a yield map. Growers use this critical information to analyze the best and worst yielding areas of a field. Materials List: Student Workbook (printed from CD for each student or team) Farm Works Education CD Installed Farm Works Office Software (Mapping & Accounting) Lesson #10 Goal: Students will learn how to import yield data from the Farm Works Educational CD. They will also learn some basic concepts of averaging and smoothing yield data points and why this is important for overall analysis. Student Intro to Lesson: Combines have the ability to use GPS technology in order to record information while harvesting a field. The yield monitor is connected to the GPS receiver to record attributes such as: dry yield, wet yield, moisture, loads, markers, and elevation. This important data is stored on a memory card in the yield monitor. Growers can take these cards out of the yield monitor and import the data into Farm Works for further analysis. Companies who manufacture yield monitors include Trimble, Ag Leader, Case New Holland, John Deere, AGCO, CLAAS, Loup Technologies, Micro-Trak, and several others. Farm Works is compatible with all of these companies. This lesson will show you how to import yield data from Case IH. 77
1. Left click the Read Job Data button located on the Job/Resource Tools Bar. You can also access this option by navigating to the File menu. 2. The Read Job Data box appears. If you have installed the proper data drivers from the Farm Works installation CD, all companies will appear in this dialog box. Open the Case IH driver by selecting the plus symbol. Select the option for AFS 200, Pro 300, Pro 600, Pro700 (*.vy1). 3. Select the Browse button to search for the yield files. 78
4. The Browse for Folder dialog box appears. Navigate to your Lesson Plan CD, and select the (+) plus next to Yield Folder and then select the 101007J9.cn1 folder. Click Ok. 5. You will be returned to the Read Job Data dialog box and the box will be populated with all of the data from the monitor. Select only the Harvesting (Grain) loads of data from this field. Tip: To highlight multiple files at one time on the screen, select the first desired file and hold your Shift key. Now select the bottom file and the series of files will be highlighted. Most growers install lower quality GPS receivers to the yield monitor. This is typical and usually good enough for yield mapping. However, there are times that lower quality GPS signals will accidentally plot a point or two outside of the field boundary. In order to fix this, Farm Works created an option called Delete Fly Away Points. When loading in yield data, we will want to always have this selected. 79
The three boxes on the left will be left unchecked for this import. Farm Works Tip: Import fields without tasks will set up any fields that were entered on the monitor regardless of if there are any tasks (jobs) recorded for that field. Update field boundaries will update field boundaries within Farm Works if boundaries were logged along with the yield data. Skip confirming farm/field information will skip over setting up the Client/Farm/Field information. The program will automatically set up these files. 6. Click OK. 7. The import process will begin with an easy-to-use import wizard. The first dialog box window will display a Linker option. These Linker windows are built into the program in order to match up items between the yield monitor and Farm Works Software. The first linker is the Job Types. Here you will see that the job type on the yield monitor is called Harvesting (Grain), whereas in Farm Works it is called Harvesting. Because these words are spelled very close, the software is smart enough to automatically link them. Since the program has linked all of the job types, there is nothing else to do on this screen so click OK. 8. The next screen is the Linker: People window. Since Doug is a new person for this project there is nothing to change. Click OK. 80
9. On the Linker: equipment screen, the I:11ARK should be linked to the Corn Header, and the NVN5H should be linked to the Combine. To link the equipment, select the Operation Resource on the left and then select the corresponding item in the Desktop Resources on the right and click the Link button. Once all items have been linked, click OK. 10. The program will go through the reading process at this point. Once completed, the jobs will be located under the appropriate field in the Client/Farm/Field tree. However, you will notice that they are listed incorrectly under 2010 Corn. These jobs will need to be corrected so that they are associated with the correct crop enterprise. 11. Click on the Jobs tab to display the yield files. There will be two new jobs with the names 10/10/06-09:23:07 and 10/10/05-10:15:27. We will need to merge these two files together to create a single yield map. This is very typical when using a yield monitor. Farm Works makes this process easy. 81
12. Left click the first job, dated 10/6/2010. Now hold down the Shift key and left click on the 10/5/2010 job. This will highlight both jobs. Right click and choose Merge. This will take a few seconds and soon they will be listed as one job. 13. To edit the job so that it has the correct dates and crop enterprise, right click on the job and choose Properties. 82
14. In the Farming Box, the 1 st column is the totals box. Anything changed in this column will copy across all columns. Change the Job Name to Field 13 Harvest, set the Start Date to 10/5/12, set the end date to 10/6/12, reset the job hours back to 11.916, and enter a Harvest Unit Price of $7.00. Click OK to record the job. 15. To view the map of the yield data, left click on the view box in front of the job (Notice that the job name and date has updated). Click on the Map tab. 83
16. The yield map will appear. The bottom of the Map tab will offer different views of the yield map (also called attributes). A yield map will offer many views. You change the map view and corresponding legend for the layer by selecting the desired attribute. For instance, left clicking on Dry Yield will offer different attributes than clicking on Elevation. All growers have a strong interest in viewing Dry Yield. This gives them actual harvest numbers that tells them exactly the number of bushels produced, which is very important information for tracking high and low yielding areas. Click on Dry Yield. 17. The yield map displays valuable information for a field. The green color represents high yielding areas and the red represents low yielding areas. 84
18. To smooth and contour the yield map, navigate back to the Views area. In this example, find the Dry Yield attribute and select the Add View button. 19. The New View window appears. Select the Contour button and enter the following details for the new view. 20. Click OK. Notes: The Average method is used since there are many data points that are close together. Marking the option for Fill Blanks will ensure that the map is clipped to the field boundaries, and the Smoothing percentage is how free-flowing the lines between colors will be. 85
21. After a few moments of calculations, a smoothed / contoured map appears. This offers a view that averages the data to show a map that is easier for most farmers to understand. This type of calculation is common for viewing yield maps. 22. Print the contoured yield map by clicking on the Print button. 23. The Print Map screen will appear. Select Standard Portrait in the Layout section, set the Map Area to Window, use Best Fit for the scale, and mark the box for Use Default Information. Click on the Print button at the bottom of the box. 86
24. The map will appear in a print preview window. Click on the printer icon in the upper right corner of the report to send the report to the printer. 87
ANSWER: IMPORTING YIELD MAP (Can also be found on Education CD - PDF) 88