Farmers will share hands-on experiences at the Precision Agriculture Conference

Jan 16, 2018

Lisa Prassack will moderate a panel consisting of three producers

By Diego Flammini
News Reporter
Farms.com

Farmers who attend the 2018 Precision Agriculture Conference will have the opportunity to hear from their peers who have adopted precision ag practices on their farms.

Lisa Prassack, president of Prassack Advisors, an independent consulting and research firm, will moderate this panel of three local growers.

Panelists will discuss the actual results they are seeing.

“We’ll focus on what’s working on the ground, and who’s providing value and who isn’t,” she told Farms.com today.

The panel will also explain the differences in precision ag over the last few years.

Producers traditionally conducted field trials in strips or small plots, but Prassack has noticed that farmers appear to be shifting towards large-scale trials.

“When we talk about strips or small plots, we may be only talking about a few metres or a few hundred feet,” she said. “Then we have whole-field trials. The pros about the large format is that we can use the farmer’s equipment, we can farm at scale, we can use yield data collection tools, and we can include the agronomists and the retailer the farmers choose to use.”

Another challenge facing producers as precision ag technology becomes more sophisticated is translating the information.

A farmer may be able to generate an NDVI map but making the right decisions for the application of this data can be difficult, Prassack said.

“Farmers will always ask me what the actionable item is,” she said. “They’ll have a picture with red, yellow and green bands in it. Part of the challenge becomes bringing all of this data together in an agronomic practice.”

Prassack is one of many great speakers scheduled to appear at the Farms.com Precision Agriculture Conference.

The event takes place Jan. 30 and 31 at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn in London, Ont.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.