Eliminating Manual Plant Stand Counts

Feb 02, 2023

Learn how SWAT CAM can be used to identify and evaluate crop establishment in your field.

By Haley BilokraIy
Farms.com Intern

Is it possible to understand your field more and make better decisions without wasting valuable time?

Derek Rude, Vice President of Research and Development at Croptimistic Technology Inc., explained at the 2022 Western Precision Agriculture Conference and Ag Technology Showcase in November 2022 that this is possible using SWAT CAM.

SWAT CAM is used to create crop and weed leaf area maps and should eventually eliminate the need for manual plant stand counts.

No extra time or labour is required to generate these maps because the SWAT CAM is installed on sprayer booms and images are automatically captured every 50 to 70 feet. While these photos are used to instantly generate crop and weed maps, they can also be accessed at any time to view crop progress without travelling to the field.

The current model of SWAT CAM can identify wheat, barley, oats, durum, canola, peas, potatoes, corn, soybean, lentil, flax, dry bean, edible bean, and kochia.

Future updates to SWAT CAM will include the ability to do plant stand counts for canola, soybean and corn. It will also be able to estimate bare soil and residue cover.

Get a sneak peek at SWAT CAM and it's many uses by wathcing the video below.

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.