Ontario Grain Farmer June/July 2021

ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER 27 JUNE/JULY 2021 existing data into a profitability mapping strategy. Now in the midst of his first mapping foray, he hopes the effort will alleviate the knowledge gap. “Why would something work over there, but not over here?” questions McBlain. “We’re trying to get to the next step and better manage our costs. This profitability thing is really new to us, and we hope to take it further.” The novelty of profitability mapping is not unique to McBlain. Indeed, Breimer estimates fewer than five per cent of Ontario farmers take the approach, due in part to the difficulty of both processing data and managing unstandardized (proprietary) data sets. But while cleaning data “can be a nightmare,” he says new management tools — and highly skilled technicians — continue to accelerate the process. The cost of getting into the data-map game is another barrier. Incorporating GPS guidance systems is the starting place, and one which Vermey says is cost-effective for most farmers. But implementing every tool required to fully realize the potential of profitability mapping is expensive and not feasible for everyone. “When you implement it fully, that’s where the real expense is. The real big cost is when you start getting into specialized fertilizer application equipment like strip till units and multi-bin applicators,” says Vermey. “It’s easier to spend the money when you have lots of acres to spread out the cost, and more acres to return the profit quicker.” Though precision technologies continue making inroads with farmers (both small and large operations alike), he believes adoption rates would be noticeably improved if we could make it affordable for all. l Rather than focusing on leveling production levels across the field, it is possible to make up for less profitable acres by driving profits on better ones. UNCOMMON PRACTICE For Tyler McBlain, a farmer from the Caledon area, many years of collecting yield, fertility, and other data sets have, despite being valuable information, not made it obvious why some parts of his family’s farm consistently underperform. Like Breimer, he says it is also easy to find what one hopes to see rather than what is actually revealed by the data. It is for this reason he has started working with Veritas and others to incorporate his