Farmview

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Farmview – Premium service in Fieldclimate

Farmview combines existing iMETOS® hardware and software and satellite data for better decision making.

The first Farmview module ‘Irrimet’ uses a fusion of different sensing devices in your field to calculate the irrigation needs.

1. PREFACE

1. PREFACE

Farmview: The Premium service in Fieldclimate

Since 2005, FieldClimate platform is an indispensable partner for the agriculture decision-making process and has been improving over the years. After launching a new mobile app version for iOS in 2019 and for Android in 2020, Pessl Instruments is offering yet another tailor-made tool within FieldClimate that enables you to visualise weather, soil moisture and growth information for your fields. The Irrimet tool combines existing iMETOS hardware within your field to deliver you a water balance monitoring system for your fields.

In particular, Farmview offers you options to:

document your field by providing field borders, crop type, management dates and related iMETOS® sensors
document your irrigation operations with help of easy-to-use calendar
learn about the water available in soil and upcoming water stress
learn how much and when to irrigate
prioritize irrigation strategies within your farm

Farmview will be realized in its entire functionality during 2020. In the next release, we will incorporate data from iMETOS soil moisture sensors. In the upcoming release, we will also introduce the satellite Sentinel-2 data that will provide support during i.e. monitoring the crop development, or mapping management zones. Later in 2020, we will also incorporate disease model outputs, insect trapping, crop monitoring and trackers.

Note: FARMVIEW is in development. We will not be charging you until major Farmview services are activated. Take advantage of this time and investigate already finished services: Water balance and Irrigation calendar.

2. HOW TO USE FARMVIEW

2.1 Registration

Identical to the registration at Fieldclimate: FieldClimate registration.

2.2 Login

Identical to the login at Fieldclimate: FieldClimate login

2.3 Main dashboard

Identical to the dashboard at Fieldclimate: FieldClimate dashboard.
Additional widgets will be available for Farmview in March 2020. These will substantially ease your work with Cropzones by presenting an overview of the selected parameters per cropzone. Stay tuned.

2.4 What is cropzone

Farmview works with so called Cropzones. Cropzone is a basic unit and represents your field or a portion of your field that is managed identically within given borders during given time . The common situation would be that an user collects multiple Cropzones per each Field and multiple Fields per Farm.

2.5 Farmview main screens

The Farmview main screen consists of three menus (Figure 1). The Navigation Bar on the left allows you to move between the dashboard, the settings and the Farmview services (so far only the Irrimet service is available, the other services will be launched during 2020). Irrimet has this icon:

The Submenu of the Navigation Bar shows the submenu for each selected icon in the main menu. For instance, it shows Daily water balance and Irrigation calendar for Irrimet. The Cropzone Menu offers an option to move between different Cropzones, adding and removing them by the ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons at the top of the menu. It also allows you to sort Cropzones based on the Farm name, the Field name and year. Finally, User Menu allows you to access the user settings such as the language, the units and the passwords.

Figure 1: Snapshot of the Farmview main screen

3. HOW TO START – 123 STEPS

3.1 Add/remove cropzone

To start using the Farmview services, you need to define your fields. This is easily done by clicking on the Cropzone list > Add cropzone and filling in the Farm name, the Field name and the Cropzone name (Figure 2).

Farm name refers to your entire farm, while Field name describes a single field with boundaries. While the Farm and Field names stay often identical during multiple seasons or years, the Cropzone name changes as you cultivate new crops.

For a Cropzone, use a name that you can easily identify later. You can even include the year and/or the crop name directly in the Cropzone name, i.e. Nexttoroad2019 or P1_Sorghum_18. This may ease your orientation between different Cropzones in the Cropzone list.

Figure 2: Snapshot of the ‘Add Cropzone’ option.

3.2 Define cropzone

Once you added the Cropzone, you need to define its cultivation period, the grown crop and the boundaries (Figure 3).

We provide you model outputs and maps exactly for this Cultivation period. Therefore, define the period so that it includes all your operations of interest. For annual and seasonal crops, define your season or a year. For perennial crops, make sure you define each single season in separate Cropzone as modifications from year to year are expected in the crop development. We are already now working on an option ‘Copy from’ to ease copying an existing Cropzone to a new one (available in March 2020).

Define your Crop (i.e. Apple). The crop name is used for user’s overview and has no automatic implications in the service.

Identify your Borders. Please include only single polygons. Use a polygon drawing option or import a geojson in a standard EPSG 4326 format. Do not include any holes in the polygon. If multipolygon is imported, only the first shape will be imported.

Figure 3: Snapshot of the Cropzone settings and location

3.3 Cropzone list, search and filter Cropzones

After adding and defining multiple Cropzones you can list them in the overview in the Cropzone Menu (Figure 4). Here, you are also offered to remove an existing Cropzones and filter and sort them by the Farm and Field name as well as by the year.

Figure 4: Snapshot of the Cropzone upper right menu

You can now start using your Farmview services. The first service is Irrimet.

4. IRRIMET

Irrimet is the first service within Farmview. It monitors water stress within your field and supports you by scheduling irrigation events. Also, it helps you to monitor your irrigation events with the help of an interactive calendar.

4.1 Irrimet requirements

Irrimet module requires sensors for:

Precipitation
Air temperature
Air humidity
Solar radiation
Wind speed

4.2 Irrimet settings

After you have successfully defined your cropzones, you are redirected to the irrimet setting page (Figure 5). First, you are asked to define your crop from the FAO crop type table. The default FAO crop (evapotranspiration) coefficients and the default root zone depth will be provided in the lower interactive graphic. Adjust them if needed by moving the green/red points up and down.

Next, you are asked to select the ID Number of stations that should provide data for rain and evapotranspiration for this Cropzone. Stations within a 10 km radius from the field are displayed in the selection.

Note: Make sure you select stations that contain data for the season that you are interested in.

Next, indicate rain efficacy: which portion of rain infiltrates the soil. Use default numbers if you don’t have any better information.

Figure 5: Snapshot of the Irrimet settings

Last, please define the phenological stages for your crop. This is required to correctly model evapotranspiration during the season. The dates can be fastly inputted with the help of an interactive graphic by dragging the orange lines (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Snapshot of the Irrimet settings

Optionally, you can also define your soil profile information such as the initial water status or the soil type (Root zone settings are located under the interactive graphic, Figure 6 and 7).

Note: Rootzone settings should be provided especially in areas with water abundance. In such areas, water that can be held by the soil should be limited in the model.

Figure 7: Snapshot of the Rootzone settings

4.3 Daily water balance

Finally, you are ready to study water stress and water surplus in your field (Figure 8). For the daily water balance computation, we used the daily rain and evapotranspiration data from your station, the crop coefficients and the management dates. The evapotranspiration was computed according to the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation. If any irrigation events were reported (see the next chapter), these will be also considered.

The lower graphic shows all the input data. The upper graphic displays the Daily water balance, where green represents water surplus and red water deficit. The maximum water balance is limited by the Field capacity and Refill points that you provided in the Rootzone settings (optional, Figure 6 and Figure 7). If a rain event occurs after any water stress period (red color), the daily water balance is automatically computed from 0.

Figure 8: Farmview snapshot showing the Daily water balance (water deficit versus water surplus) derived from your inputs: Precipitation, evapotranspiration and irrigation.

4.4 Irrigation

Our interactive calendar (Figure 9) enables you to input your single or regular irrigation events. These are then immediately considered in the daily water balance computation (previous chapter).

Figure 9: Snapshot of the Irrigation calendar.

You can input your events by clicking on the date in the calendar and filling in the Event name, the Irrigation type, the Irrigation Start and the Duration (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Snapshot of the Irrigation calendar when inputting a single event.

For recurring events, you should (in addition to previous) activate the Recurring event button, input the Frequency and the End of schedule prior to saving events.

Figure 11: Snapshot of the Irrigation calendar when inputting a recurring event.