Agricultural machinery-scale trials and their benefits in understanding new agricultural products
Agricultural machinery-scale trials and their benefits in understanding new agricultural products
Author: Mary-Anne Lowe, Brad Wisewould, Mehrdad Hanifei, Atbin Mahabbati, Roberto Rossi and Wes Lawrance, AxisTech, CarbonAg Solutions | Date: 07 Mar 2024
Key messages
- Large-scale trials could increase the adoptability of new products and techniques in broadscale agriculture.
- The use of large-scale trials shows practicality of the new systems as well as direct, at scale, comparisons of soil condition, yield and quality with current systems.
- The benefit of doing these trials across the State shows the range of regions, rainfall, landscapes, soils and commodities, making results more relevant to more farmers.
Aims
To demonstrate that sustainable agriculture can be practical and beneficial to farmers and presented in a dynamic platform to aid in farm decision-making.
Introduction
Many agricultural products and methods are trialed in pots and plots but not many make it to being adopted. This can be especially the case in the sustainability space as it is often unknown how these treatments and practices will be in practice and at a larger scale.
AxisTech and Carbon Ag Solutions have joined forces to support large-scale trials for demonstration of agricultural and soil benefits. The benefit of larger-scale trials is that they can prove the use of amendments at scale, with commonly used equipment and methods, providing confidence to growers of their effectiveness and practicality. Trials cover large areas on individual properties and show amendments at scale, covering large areas over the State to show amendments in different regions, rainfall, landscapes, soils, and commodities.
In doing these trials we want to encourage sustainable agriculture at scale and encourage on farm experimentation. On-farm experiments can be used in trialing the viability of identified strategies on plots of land, and with the benefit of the farmers being involved in the process of the trial. This allows the farmer to gauge the complexity/difficulty of implementation but also gauge the success of outcomes on the ground and in the data. Making the trials possible with existing equipment, where there is not a plan to purchase equipment, is also important as results can be seen at scale. Scale trials are not necessarily scientifically relevant; however, they can be indicative of results and can begin to explain the reason behind variations observed.
One of the titular products used in this trial is Carbon Ag Solution’s C33. This product is part of a self-contained circular system of green waste and FOGO, taking waste from the urban areas and transforming it into plant nutrition and a soil health ameliorant. The palletisation of this ameliorant takes the compost form from requiring a large amount of additional effort to being able to be used easily in a commonly used system. The utilisation of waste is also a benefit for society, lowering emissions, but could play a critical role in restoring soil carbon in broadacre agriculture, and therefore potentially increasing the yield potential over time as soil health increases.
While trials are commonly done, and sustainable products are commonly tested, the data from these are not always good, readable, and reusable in accessible formats. Presenting data in a manner that highlights values of note and also aids in farm management is helpful. It is also important to take measurements that can assist in the understanding of trends over time, so that while there may not be statistically significant reasoning there can be indications for further analysis.
Method
These trials explored the use of sustainable agriculture techniques and products and tested a variety of metrics to give indication to an assessment of effectiveness. Seeding was conducted by the iPaddock AlphaDisc, starting in the south and moving north. The remainder of the season was managed by the farms, with standard farm treatment of the trial plots, harvest was also conducted by the farmers, with their own machines.
The treatments and site layout conducted in this trial was as below (Figure 1). The control in this trial was the standard treatment that the farmer applies for that crop type, this was not standard across all sites. The trial plots were a mixture of Carbon Ag Solutions and standard farmer products. Nine sites in the northern half were also sown with Crommelin AgriCoatings MAPMag in place of the MAP MOP product. The DKP product is a Carbon Ag Solutions highly concentrated potassium and phosphorus liquid fertiliser with a near neutral pH and free of chloride and sulphate. C33 is a Carbon Ag Solutions urban waste stream derived product with around 33% carbon and 45% organic matter, this product is then palletised to be able to be sown with the seed through an air-seeder. Crommelin AgriCoatings MAPMag is a magnesium coating on the MAP product which gives it extra magnesium at the seed, along with other nutrients required.
Site selection
Sites were selected across the State and consisted of different regions, rainfall, landscapes, soils, and commodities. Sites were in the Esperance, the Central and the Northern regions, from near Esperance to near Kalbarri.
Sampling
At the start of the season a baseline was done of the soil condition, to understand the natural variation within the trial areas, this was conducted at all sites in the trial. Intensive sampling analysis was done at five sites, these sites were located only in the central and northern regions. The commodities at these sites included two with canola, one wheat, one barley and one lupin. Soil samples were taken in each plot of the intensively sampled trial sites at emergence and at mid-season to assess the soil condition at two critical points in the season, this includes carbon, nitrogen, some macro- and micro-nutrients. Crop cover was also measured at these times, at these sites and at three points within each plot, through Canopeo. The location of sample points was selected before seeing the site and locations were in a grid pattern as to avoid preferential site selection. We also measured the crop through satellite NDVI, this was sometimes difficult due to cloud cover but was helpful whole plot indication of crop health.
At mid-season, plant tissue analysis was also conducted within each plot of the intensively sampled trial sites. Analysis on these tissue samples assessed what micro and macronutrients were in a selection of plants as compared with the soil. At harvest all sites had yield analysed and had grain tests done to compare the quality of the grain. Farmers took the samples of the grain themselves and harvested themselves in their own machinery.
Unexpected variation
Based on this being a farmer managed trial, there were variations on the above method, where some sites did not have all the analysis conducted for whatever reason. For example, not all sites were able to give yield results or did not have samples taken for grain analysis, this was for a range of reasons.
Analysis of data
Data was ingested into the AxisStream database and shown within the platform, allowing for the sharing of data to individual growers, and deidentified data shared externally and with the associated partners. The platform allows the analysis of data in a dynamic manner allowing for interaction with the data to analyse different variables. Built into the analysis are also measures that are not always calculated but provide benefit such as the interaction between the C:N ratio in the soil and the uptake of nitrogen in the plant. Measuring, calculating and presenting data such as this can then be of great benefit to farmers and farm decision makers.
These trials have not had statistical analysis conducted on them as there are no repetitions of the trial plots in the same conditions. The purpose of these trials was not to show statistical differences but to show the practicality of the method, and large-scale results with enough measurement that can give an indication of what may be occurring.
Results
The variation of the baseline showed variation between sites and between ratios of the compounds being measured, however, no site showed levels that would be very inhibiting for crop growth.
The soil conditions of the soil from emergence to mid-season changes very little. On average, the treatments with C33 increased in soil carbon, while others stayed similar or decreased from emergence to mid-season. In nitrogen, the total nitrogen mostly stayed relatively the same, while nitrate predominantly decreased in time. The average C:N ratio ranged from 14:1 to 16:1, with the highest average in the FF C33 DKP treatment, however at individual sites this varied. Similarly the P:Zn and K:Na ratios, ranged from 29:1 to 41:1 and 2:1 to 5:1, respectively, and these varied at individual sites. The P:Zn ratio was much higher than the ideal ratio, while some of the K:Na ratio was below the ideal ratio and some was within the ideal range. The average CEC ranged from around 7.5 meq/kg in the Nil treatment to 11 meq/kg in the MAPMOP treatment, ranging at the individual sites.
The nutrient analysis in the plant tissue sampling at mid-season shows the highest average nitrogen and potassium in the C33 treatment and the lowest in the MAPMOP treatment. The phosphorus levels in the plant tissue were similar across all treatments. Other nutrients, varied greatly in their levels within the plant between different treatments, enormously between the crop types and even varied between the sites that had the same crop type.
The interactions in the soil and the plant showed that trends were often bucked with different treatments. The opposing trends included a very low plant nitrogen level in the lupin’s site with the FF DKP treatment, while very high levels of plant phosphorous were found in the relatively low exchangeable acidity of the same plot. Meanwhile the same FF DKP followed the trend with higher K:Na ratio equating to a relatively high plant nitrogen level although the C33 treatment bucked this trend with high plant potassium and relatively low K:Na. Other sites with other plant species showed different trends entirely and different treatments bucking different trends, and some showed no trends.
While some sites showed harvest yield results that increased due with spatial factors, other sites showed increases due to treatments. On average, the MAP MOP treatment showed the highest yield result while the MAPMag showed the lowest, however these are highly dependent on a link between region as the MAP MOP was only applied in the south and the MAPMag only applied in the north. Excluding these results the FF DKP and FF C33 DKP results were highest, while the Nil Fert was the lowest. At individual sites there was high variations between weather the standard farmer practice had higher yield or C33 and DKP products. The MAPMag product often showed greater yield than its neighbouring control, and where it did not the levels were even.
On average, FF DKP had the highest protein and one of the controls had the lowest protein, however on average all were very similar. Interestingly, the Nil fertiliser treatment did not have significantly less protein in most treatments.
Conclusion
The large-scale field trial is not designed for product testing and small-scale pots and plots should still be considered to understand what impact the product has in a controlled environment. Additionally, presenting data from field trials does not present recommendations and agronomists should be involved in this process to understand and recommend based on results. However, practically, for a sustainable agricultural future farmers should understand what works on their plots of land and we encourage large-scale agricultural trials with good data to be able to reach those conclusions.
Overall, we found that the trials were able to give scaled results for farmers, while also being able to offer further insights by having an interactive online platform to present and compare the data.
Acknowledgments
This project was done in collaboration with AxisTech, Carbon Ag Solutions, Carbon Ag Technologies, Green Ag Technologies, Crommelin AgriCoatings and seeded by i-paddock Alpha Disc. We would also like to thank all the farmers who contributed their land and time.
Contact details
Email: maryanne@axistech.co