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Ag Geek Speak
GK Technology Inc Team Members, Jodi Boe and Sarah Lovas talk about precision agriculture, agriculture mapping, agronomy and drainage.
Ag Geek Speak
2. (Ag)ronomy with Emma Part 2
Ag with Emma, a leading voice in agriculture, shares her journey from novice to practical mastery in field mapping with ADMS. Through engaging anecdotes and expert guidance from mentors like Kyle Okke, Emma's passion for mapping shines through. She emphasizes the unique blend of science and artistry involved in creating accurate agricultural maps, while also highlighting the importance of personalized learning approaches in mastering these complex systems.
Our conversation dives deep into the meticulous process of soil fertility analysis and sampling, revealing surprising insights into how historical elements like tree rows can impact soil nutrient levels. Emma walks us through the exhaustive steps of mapping fields for future soil sampling and fertility planning, with a focus on understanding the intriguing variance in phosphorus levels. We also discuss the mystery behind "snirt"—the nutrient-rich mix of snow and dirt—and the importance of avoiding skewed soil samples to ensure accurate data.
The final part of our episode navigates the challenges and growth opportunities in agronomy. From humorous tales of file naming to the serious business of defining boundaries and organizing data, Emma's insights illuminate the high-stakes, rewarding nature of agronomic data management. We wrap up with a discussion on the unpredictability of farming and the continuous journey of learning and improvement, as Emma reflects on the joy of hands-on fieldwork and the crucial role of providing accurate, data-driven advice to farmers.
Connect with Ag with Emma here: https://linktr.ee/agwithemma
And now it's time for a Geek Speak with GK Technologies, sarah and Jody, friends and I can't wait to get in the fields again no, I can't wait to get in the fields again all right, we're back here with part two of our episode with ag, with Emma, no eggs ag with Emma, egg with Emma same um.
Jodi:But we're super excited to have Emma on the podcast today, and last time we talked a little bit about Emma's background, how she got into the world of social media, influencing in agriculture, so please go back and check that first part of this conversation out. But what we're going to do today we're going to talk to Emma a little bit about what she does with precision agriculture, how she uses ADMS and, of course, gk Field Mapper too, and talk about what she's learned so far.
Sarah:I think one of the things that's really important to bring up is that, emma, you have a little bit of a GIS background, don't you? Yes, okay, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Emma:Yeah, so when I was going to school at College of Southern Idaho I mentioned that briefly in the last episode, but we had some really great courses and really great professors that saw the value in having those courses at the college. So I took some GIS classes and then I actually took a precision agriculture class specifically and at the time I didn't even it didn't grasp in my brain like they were talking about honestly, like they were talking about GDUs, they were talking about DVI and I was like, okay, but what do you use that for?
Sarah:you know, I was like that's nice next, you know.
Emma:And then I started working with Kyle and I was like, oh my gosh, it was like unlocking a little box in my brain. I was like everything just my professors from school, like I told you you'd use that one day. So I never got my certificate of GIS but there was like I studied it for a semester. I took like one or two classes that just let us sit in the computer lab and make little maps and do stuff like that. So I can't remember how similar that software was to GK's like mapping stuff. But I know that I have an easier time clicking around and like drawing maps and boundaries and understanding the gist of it because of that like locked up little memory cube I had sitting in there and and it is interesting because, uh, you know well, both Jodi and I will work with different customers and clients, helping them learn how to run our software.
Sarah:We do this in a lot of different ways. One of the things we do is we'll do team viewer sessions with them online so they can be in their office. We'll be in our office, but we can see what's going on on their screen. We can actually take over the mouse and move around and do clicks. And so I know, emma, you and I worked a little bit online and I was very surprised. Yeah, I had to show you where a couple of buttons were, but you kind of knew the concepts and you really picked up on things quite fast. So I thought that was that was really fun. Um, and I was like, hmm, you've, you've got a bat, you've, you've got a little background here.
Emma:So that's how I kind of found out about it, but it seems like it really fit in well and helped you out a lot yeah, and the fun part about where we did the team viewer thing was Kyle showed me one way to do it and then you showed me a completely different way, and I love that, because there's so many different ways to do the exact same thing and we're all out here like doing it the way that it works for your brain. I think that's the coolest part about the mapping stuff is, everyone has their own thing and it works for different brain types.
Sarah:It is a science and an art to make zones, and you can make zones from all different kinds of data, and that's that's great. But you have to find that way that works for you. And yeah, it's very true, there's a lot of times when people don't make zones exactly the same way. Even within our own company, here at GK, we can find different ways of doing things, absolutely.
Jodi:And things are all kind of the same in terms of when we're making a boundary it's a combination of points and lines that form a polygon, right? So, like having those concepts and knowing that, okay, when I'm drawing a boundary, what my goal here is making a polygon, even though you might not think of those as like being your terms, like once you kind of wrap your head around that, it's just like okay, now I'm gonna make a cut out of this polygon. So that means I need to make separate polygons, make sure they're all connected. Like the point is is, once you kind of get that base concept of like what are these things and what am I making, it helps, just helps you to create and think about things. Or like make the things you're trying to make in your head, on the computer and then in the field, yeah so it's been really fun to use the software for that.
Sarah:So what sorts of mapping things have you been doing with Kyle so far?
Emma:so when I started with Kyle, I think he had me start like bare minimum on just downloading images to make some zones. Like I was just looking at images making sure there was't clouds and making sure it was the right time frame, um, and I didn't really grasp like the why. Because Kyle gives things to me in little bites. You know he's like, okay, here's this new. I think he's learning that I'm a better like big picture learner but like also small bites are good. Um, but I started with just downloading like a bunch of images for certain fields that he hadn't mapped out yet, though he we needed to get done before sampling was over. And then I started there was a couple of fields that he needed boundaries drawn for, and then he had a couple of times, like, after I downloaded all the images, he had me merge them together.
Emma:Like it's been very bite, size, manageable pieces, to the point that we had a farmer that we just started working with, the farmer that I have actually worked with for the last year and a half or whatever and I was like, hey, I know you need some fields, man.
Emma:And so, like Kyle's goal, like we talked about this, he was like, well, it'd be good for you to start from like bare minimum or not bare like ground zero on fields that you've been on. So it just helped anyways that the farmer needed soil samples. So I got to like build those maps from the ground up and then we went soil sampled them and they were such complex fields like they had tree rows they had tree rows from 20 years ago that you could still see on the imagery that we had to like pencil out and then you had to make like three different maps to soil sample and pulled zones off. It was insane like the amount of work that it wasn't just a draw a square, go do the zones and then you know pull 20 samples of zone. It was like I think we pulled it had to be like 400 samples because you guys ended up with a lot of like, not 400 mod.
Sarah:Yeah, mod areas in those fields from that and so you made them all yourself right, yeah and these were fields that you had actually um done harvesting on yep, yeah, so they were the third.
Emma:Like their productivity is varying so much in those fields because there's just a lot of stuff going on, so they had tree rows that have been ripped out in the last like year tree rows that had been ripped out five years ago. So we had to make separate fields.
Emma:And then there was a chunk of the field in the middle that was an alfalfa field, so we had to make that a separate field then there was a section on the other side that's always been wet, so we had to take that out and, like it was always in hay or something like that, so I had to avoid that area. And then there's the tops of the sand hills that are completely different from other red zones, so we had to, like, leave that stuff out, and it was just really crazy.
Sarah:And so normally okay. So when you're talking about pulling those separate places that field out, would the farmer actually like just drive across that area once and and plant the whole thing going straight through? Is that kind of the intention going forward? So like where that old alfalfa field is, would he plant going through that alfalfa field?
Emma:Yeah, so now it's all one field, like they farm it as one field. They just recently ripped out tree rows on a place that they had to like do the loop de laws around the tree rows, but they took all of them out, so right now it doesn't have any hay in it except for, like, the prevent plant side that's literally always wet.
Sarah:They can't get in okay, so um have you had the chance to make a prescription yet?
Emma:oh yes, kind of it's like in the process, like we got the results, we plugged in what crop it's going to be and then I don't think we've made like the prescription map okay so because the cool, cool thing about that is um, yeah, you can totally pull out that alfalfa field and make sure that you get that soil sampled separately from the other things.
Sarah:you can even have its own zones within that little alfalfa field and then everything else can have its own alfalfa field. But once you get your prescriptions made for each one of those fields separately, if you're going to farm through those, you just merge them together, exactly.
Emma:And that's what Kyle and I were talking about. So we just haven't got to the. We're still working on getting everyone else's like fertilizer recommendations. So we're right now we're at the stage of taking the soil sample results and plugging them in to make the maps for that to get like the average rates that the farmers need. So after I'm sure, like agronomy on ice, it'll start kicking back up into making. He showed me how to make the prescription maps of like what it looks like, to plug the prescription into gk and then plug it into a tractor like you show me how you have to like, break it down, like and D, pixelate it basically to like get the certain amount of pixels per equipment.
Emma:Um, but we just haven't like I haven't sat down and done it yet.
Sarah:So it hasn't really clicked yeah. Once you do it, it'll fall into place.
Jodi:And so thinking back to like okay, you've got this big area, this big field, and there's a lot of different things going on in it. What was it was? It? Was it nice having that map that had all those mod areas when you were sampling? We didn't necessarily like ma.
Emma:So when we made the sample map I just boundaried out the mod areas because there wasn't a ton of them, but it was just like we had when we started. I was like this is going to be such a mess. So I started naming all of the last like where I wanted it to be like final boss image. Like this is the final boss, but inside. So there's one field and then we had three sections within that field. So we sampled one section, the hay section, and then the north section where the tree rows were. So I think the 400 400 samples was probably accurate because there's three zones. Within all of those there's 20 to 30 and we pulled like astronomical amounts because of all the stuff that was happening.
Emma:And then in the south field there was a hay section and then there's the main section, and then we pulled off tree rows that had been there like 20 years ago and that's when we got those like crazy phosphorus results. That was insane. So like between all that, I think it probably was close to like 300 or 400 samples. We pulled that day Cause it was five fields.
Sarah:Is this the first time that this farmer has done precision soil sampling?
Emma:Yes, so he used to do composites and then we took the composite sample results compared to the zone sample results and found like kind of where they got skewed, and I loved that.
Jodi:I was like have you had a chance to sit down with the grower and talk through those?
Emma:yeah, so we talked about, and we actually saved soil from all the samples, so we have a tube full of like top soil subsoil yeah, so they're all sitting in the office because I wanted to be able to see it.
Emma:I'm like here's what this soil test looked like and here's what the soil looks like and all it really shows is like difference in organic matter basically. But it's even cool to see that because the tree row organic matter was so much higher and you can see like it's just a dark brown tube, you know. But the other tubes where you pulled sand or you pulled like whatever, was completely different. So it was so fun to here you go.
Sarah:Did you show the farmer the different soils?
Emma:Yeah, he loved it. He was like, oh yeah, this is so fun Cause it used to be my old boss. Like he loves learning about that kind of stuff and he knows that it's all different on that farm, like that field especially so, and he's always had a problem with it.
Jodi:So you mean it's amazing, right, Like you, you put in a lot of time. Um it was literally so much.
Emma:It was like a week straight of just work for that. Like, and it was two fields, yeah, yeah, so it was just crazy.
Jodi:But the beautiful thing is like OK, you've got that map made now and you pull those initial samples Now you have that map to go forward in the future. You keep using it again and fine tuning that, that soil fertility plan that you've got.
Emma:Yeah, and Kyle mentioned that we're just trying to get those samples to all look relatively similar and then we can combine them. So until they look better, until we like apply what needs to be applied at the different rates and get it all to match again, like we'll probably just keep sampling.
Jodi:Yeah because you can mine that. You can mine that phosphorus in those old tree rows for a long time. Yeah, no, kidding, right compared to the rest of the field but we just did that as like a test.
Emma:It was just to see, like, what do the tree rows actually look like? Because kyle wanted it for like in, like research and like educational purposes to be like harry, this is why you map around the tree rows and fence rows, you know, like this is why this is literally because we only pulled from the green zone of the tree rows and then compared it to the green zone of the main field, and it was just crazy yeah, and just to take a second to think about that.
Jodi:Um, so when I first started working at gk, I like you know you think about it, you know not to like sample in weird spots of the field, um, but I never really thought about it. You know why you'd mod that out and send it out to the soil samplers. But, yeah, think about it. Okay, so you've had a true row since 1930 and it maybe it was taken out in 2003 or something. So like 70 years and so over that time you have all this top soil that's blowing into these true rows, and these true rows with all the brome grass is just sitting there is going to collect all that top soil. And where's the phosphorus and potassium and other non-mobile nutrients? Those are in the topsoil. And so these, these places that used to catch this soil right, super high organic matter, super high phosphorus levels. So you know, if you're using a composite or even if you're pulling samples for zone maps, it's really important to stay out of those to make sure they're not skewing. Your average soil test result is in those areas. God, that's great info.
Emma:And I didn't even know the tree rows were there to the extent that they were, until I was using the NDVI and I went way back because I was just curious and I went to like 1990 or something just to see and the images weren't like top knot, you know, because it's just like satellite.
Emma:Stuff from back then is not as advanced as it was today yeah, but you could even just like seeing that difference of like what it looked like back then, what it looks like now, like, and I just needed a clearer line of where the tree rows were actually at. So it helped me out a lot. But it was crazy, like when I started seeing those little lines through the fields. I'm like no, like there's no way, because even you can see it in the seat, like the drills will go across and you can see it. When the crop comes up, you can see the line and I'm like you'd never know that, though it's not like that distinctive line, you can see it from anywhere else.
Jodi:So and that's you know. It's so funny talking about what kind of images to look at when you're making zone maps together. Like it might sound weird to like look at the drg, which typically will have you know info on water movement, and like maybe old tree rows or houses, but like those are absolutely something to take a look at because they might contain some of those old tree rows, some of those old like houses, farm sites, just where some of that weird stuff might be in fields.
Sarah:Yeah, Did you remember the actual numbers from the soil test phosphorus levels that were in the tree row versus some of the others. I think it was like 16. 16 parts per million on an Olsen test in the tree row.
Emma:It had to have been like 16, 17.
Sarah:And what was out in the field.
Emma:The others owned it had to be below, I think below 10. It had to have been.
Sarah:That sounds about right. I mean, if I had to guess. I was just trying to look up really quick if I could find, because I have a friend of mine that actually did some studies on this. She was taking a look at snert. You know the snow that gets contaminated with dirt from erosion in the ditch and it's always super rich in phosphorus. It was just so interesting.
Jodi:So we did that at Agvize a couple years ago, going into 2021, when we had a really open winter and we could take all the snert and we could test it. But the hard part was like it's not a zero to six inch sample yeah, so like what is? Yeah, yeah, some wet dust yeah, wet dust that has a lot of, you know, non-mobile nutrients in it which is super interesting, because you don't think about the snow being like hey, yo, you're a high phosphorus yeah I don't look at snur and be like I put that at so much phosphorus.
Sarah:I look at it and I'm like that's gonna be all over my pickup people don't ever look at that the soil blowing though in the air, and think about it that way, either they're just like, oh there goes the top soil and it is. It's really sad from that perspective. But man, that's a lot of money in phosphorus blowing away, holy hannah, start mining that off.
Emma:The snow plows man.
Sarah:It's crazy. So what was your favorite part of making that zone map?
Emma:When I made all the maps, like I was so exhausted I had brain frog, so bad, it was just like I lost track of where I was at so many times, cause it was just so much putting together and I was kind of new to it.
Emma:But the day that we went out and sampled and I saw the red zones, before I was in the red zones and then I was sampling them and making the connection about, like what the yield was like during harvest the last year, cause like I just helped harvest those fields, and like seeing, like oh, last year, because like I just helped harvest those fields and like seeing, like, oh, there's so much pigeon grass in this red zone and you can like see the pigeon grass seed in the soil, sample, like there was so much, it was disgusting. And then you see the results from that and I'm like, and then Kyle explains why it's all there. Like it was just we had this talk, I think, in the group, and you'd said a lot about it. I can't remember like what exactly we're talking about, but it was just, we had this talk, I think, in the group, and you'd said a lot about it.
Emma:I can't remember like what exactly we're talking about, but it was some kind of that nutrient, the nutrient tie-up that leads to all of the like pigeon grass stuff, because it was super high yes yeah, yes, yes, okay, yep yeah so the pH in those spots was like four and a half oh my gosh, that's really low, and then we go from talking about low ph to talking about like variable rate spreading on those spots, and that's when you get into the grid sampling debacle and you don't you know you know like no thanks, but um, yeah, so it's just really cool to see like the domino effect when you had your zone map and you were out soil sampling you could actually like, because you've run a combine over
Emma:that ground right well, I was in the grain cart but I always know what the guys were like and you can. We have the yield map from harvest and it looks like the zone map. And that's the craziest part to me, because people tweet and be like the zone map, like zone sampling is such an old, outdated technique. And I'm like brother, look at the zone map, look at the yield map and then tell me that again with a straight face, please. It just makes sense right. Like and I get that you know there's the human aspect of it, but the part you know we were just talking about this like it makes you an agronomist when you take your human brain and interpret the data and go about in your field and go soil sample and make conclusions and like that's why you'd make the maps.
Sarah:It's not just outdated technology, like maybe your brain's outdated brother I don't know well, sorry, and it's interesting just to bring to life like what that yield map actually looks like, yeah, and why it does. And so I. This podcast today is supposed to be about you, but I'm going to share with you. It is so much fun when you make a map for a farmer and you know that you nailed that map because you can just see it light up in their face.
Emma:You just know when you nailed it Because they know all their problem spots and they know it before you're making that map and they know what they're going to look at when you present that map to them and they know what they're going to pick apart and they know they're good areas.
Sarah:They know where they're getting those really super high yielding areas. So it's it's really fun to see that come to life on a map. And then it's really fun to see when you're soil sampling, to see all the differences in the actual soils that you, you handle yeah, well, like in the buckets, especially like when I'm in the pickup, it's just crazy.
Emma:And then you mix it all up and you can still see the difference in the buckets, but then when we put them in the tubes, it all it. It looks the same, kind of like you can tell the difference between the top soil and the sub soil. But like I just feel like in the buckets it's just such a reaffirming little hey, you did your job right, you know. So that's the cool part.
Jodi:I'm so excited for you to start scouting next spring, like when you, when you think about like crop scouting a lot of college students will scout from like May and maybe those soil tests at the end of the year. But I feel like how you've approached this and maybe it's all by accident, that's, that's totally fine, but like you're kind of taking it from the front end of like, okay, you've harvested, um, and you've seen the yield maps of these fields, you've been around them. Now you've gone out, you've made the map, so you're kind of looking at the whole field from a, yeah, 100 foot perspective and you've soil sampled, you've seen the results. You're gonna go fertilize and now you going to go look in scout and see, okay, oh yeah, this spot looks a little bit different and I remember this is a different zone, right?
Emma:Like.
Jodi:I'm so curious what you're going to find in terms of like weed issues and like make those connections between. Is there some sort of like, other underlying thing or activity that took place on this piece of ground that might explain why I'm seeing something different here than over there?
Emma:I'm literally so excited, so like after I wasn't even supposed to stay on for a whole year, um, like I was genuinely just supposed to help Kyle's oil sampling and when he called me on the phone the first time, he's like yeah, I could help you get some connections to like some other people in the area, if the agronomy is something you want to do. And then we were talking about it. He's like do you want to just, you know work here? And I'm like, okay, because it's like the dot connecting is so cool. And I just and the fact that it's not a sales position, like I genuinely feel like I'm getting such a better educational standpoint from this than just like trying to sell product, because trying to sell stuff like I'm a air quote influencer and when I have to try to sell stuff to people I just choke.
Sarah:Like but you're, you're really going to be selling quote-unquote information. Yeah, and it is so much fun to learn, yeah, out in the field and you have a great teacher. So when you get to be out in that field and you get to learn all the ins and the outs and you do get to see it come together, oh, it is so rewarding I'm so excited.
Sarah:It's a lot of work, it's a dope. Gonna be hard work, but yeah, and and I don't think you get the chance to have as close of a relationship with farmers as as you do when you work with them in this consulting capacity exactly you get to know, you know what, what's important to them, how they think, how they make decisions and what they really need on their farming operation. And it's just, it's a very special job.
Sarah:Yeah, I'm very excited, so yeah, what were some of the challenges that you really faced when you were making your map?
Emma:So, with it being, I guess the process of it was like what should I do? First, because you have this big field that's farmed as one right now, like they have been farming it as one for two years. So you're like, okay, well, I need to make a big boundary. But then you make a big boundary and you can't really use it, like you have no use for it. So you have to go in and be like, okay, when did the field change? You know like, what were the, what was the year? And then you have to go and collect all of the data. And the way that I collected data was like I wanted to get one chunk done at a time because I wanted to be able to be thorough and like, look at it, and there was a couple times that I could download the whole field.
Emma:But I was like I can't really make a zone map for the hay field at the same time making a zone map for this field, because it was also really nice, because the field was so big. If there was a cloud in this section, I was like, well, I'm downloading for this section anyway. So that was it, I think, just the process and there are so many files. Kyle looked at it and he's like you gotta clean this thing up.
Sarah:I was like I'm very aware, but I know.
Emma:I know where everything is. Let me tell you, it's like a messy room. I know. My hairbrush is like two centimeters away from the pencil.
Jodi:It is so funny Like I I know I look back at like the maps that I made before working at DK, like I knew where everything was, but like the data structure and organization was, it was janky.
Emma:Well, yes, janky, to say the least.
Emma:I'm a janky organizer and I will give things weird names, like the other day we started naming things graveyard because I was already making maps and the maps. We had to redo the maps because we had a different fertilizer needs and everything like that. So I was like, well, I can't remember if Kyle said it or if I said it, it was just like, well, it's going in the graveyard and I had to make a graveyard file in every single field and I was like, oh well, graveyard, final boss.
Sarah:We need to get this girl a fiery trash can of death shirt.
Emma:I used that icon the other day. Kyle and I were looking at something with data points and he's like we're going to bring these to the fiery trash can of death.
Sarah:I points and he's like we're gonna bring these to the fiery trash can. I was like that's not real and he's like it's right there. There's no way. Oh yeah, I thought it was so funny for the listeners. If you want to delete vector data and gk technology, we have a fiery trash can of death and once you hit that, that data is gone don't ever let me get my hands on what to name things at bk, because it will be the fiery trash can of death.
Emma:It's where the bad data goes yeah, but that was the hardest part is, I think, yeah, just making it organized and being new to it, because I can, I can grasp it, but just knowing where everything goes and how everything lines out and like oh yeah, you have to download in that specific folder because that's where it's going to end up and you don't want to have to sit there and sift through all of it.
Emma:So Kyle showed me a lot of like tips and tricks on how to keep stuff organized and like, oh yeah, when you're making soil sample, like test result maps, like copy the boundary, drop it in your zone result folder like, keep it all square so it's not all over the place.
Jodi:It is good advice. Yeah, it is super handy to have a more experienced hand just to walk through, like, like you mentioned too, like this field that you're working with, it's got multiple years it's a monster it is a monster. That's a really hard field to start on, like so having somebody there to help walk through, like okay, let's think about it this way. Or like let's work on these in pieces, like just having that is very helpful.
Emma:Exactly, it feels like a long process and I think the next time I get a field like that it'll just be like boom, boom, boom, Cause I call my stride with it.
Emma:But you'll, you'll know once you, once you walk in there you'll be able to be like okay, what if I think about it this way and how do I divide it up? And it always improves. Yeah, that's the exciting part. It's like it's always room for improvement in the industry that we're in, like in the agronomic, like there's room for improvement and everything. But I really like being somewhere where improvement is necessary and encouraged, I guess and there's never two things the same either.
Jodi:Right like there's, there's never perfection, because none of us can predict what the weather's going to be like, and that it's literally like a high risk.
Emma:Like everyone talks about how farming is so high. Like I feel like the agronomy side of it is just as high in risk there. Like you're putting everything you know on the line, not knowing what's going to happen At the expense of someone else. Like that's insane to me.
Jodi:Now, when you put it that that way.
Emma:That's kind of what it is like. Farmers put it all on like at the expense of themselves.
Emma:Sure, like the people that they work with, but like when you're an agronomist and you have advice, and like I'm not at that point yet, like I'm not an advice, like I'm not there, but like watching the decisions that, like Kyle has to make for the farmer, I'm like good luck but it's very, it's a very special rewarding when it goes right, but like when it goes wrong, it goes wrong it most the time, though, it doesn't go wrong, yeah there's enough proven data and events to be like this isn't gonna go wrong, but in the off chance, I would say that's terrifying to me but like it happens, like it happens to everybody, um, everybody that works in that, that line of making guidelines and recommendations for things like you can't be perfect, no, you can't be perfect and like sometimes there's like with labels, right, sometimes you don't read the back page and there's one little clause or that says, hey, you don't have that much rain, or you miss that, that, yeah, that rain threshold by like three inches.
Jodi:Then you probably might have crop response. Like it's just, there's so many things, there's so many factors and it's impossible to know everything. Yeah, exactly, and if anybody is telling you that they're out there crop consulting and not making mistakes, they are they're lying.
Sarah:Well, if anybody's out there um crap consulting, saying that they're not learning something new every day, that's probably a better way to put it.
Emma:You probably have a closed minded consultant.
Sarah:Yeah, Um, that's the one of the best parts about the whole thing is just being able to constantly learn. Um always trying to do things a little bit better, trying to help the farmer do things a little bit better, but it is always very educational and it's a lot to keep track of.
Emma:It's a lot of brain space. It's a nice challenge though.
Sarah:Oh, it's super fun. It's great. I am so glad that you're doing this. I am just so excited to keep watching you on social media to see what's going to be happening with your experiences as an agronomist with Kyle going forward.
Emma:I'm excited to make it like fun and yeah, not that agronomy is old, but I haven't seen like agronomy videos aimed towards the younger generation of kids that are getting into it, like that type of style of content, like a lot of the agronomists that post on the internet post for other agronomists. There's not a consumer based, like consumer pointed agronomy standpoint. So that's my goal for this year.
Jodi:So that's amazing. It's gonna be really hard.
Emma:I like I'm struggling with it, but we're not in season yet either, like I'm so, like I struggle so hard sharing the office stuff, because I'm like this is kind of redundant and like people consumers don't know about that. Like, yeah, that's the goal it's so.
Sarah:It's interesting because you have to start at baseline yeah, and while it doesn't feel like there's a lot going on right now, because you're not- in the field, but there's so much because, you're trying to do planning. You're trying to make the maps, you're trying to make the herbicide plans.
Emma:You're going to conferences and learning and meeting all these other people with all these other ideas that do things all totally different. And then you're like meeting new people that are like what do you even do for work? And I'm like I don't know, I feel like a hamster wheel right now. That's what I'm doing for work. I'm just running man, I'm blowing off steam, trying to like get everything done.
Emma:It's a lot of fun. I am definitely on the slave labor side of like computer work right now, though, which is fun. Are you doing a?
Emma:lot of mapping yet right now yeah, we're still like we're just plugging in fertilizer plan, plugging in soil results, plugging in like okay, this is what we need for this farm. We're like this is how much like and that's the part aboutronomy Like you are being depended on for so much information because you're like you have to get it down to the dime of like this is how much your spring is going to cost you. It's very tight. Yeah, it's like I did not realize that aspect of this Like that's what my eyeballs are opening up right now about. I'm like everyone's in a pickle right now, like especially this spring, after everything that's happened and everything. So that's a lot of the margins are definitely tight going into this year. Yeah, it's pinching and then it's pinching more, so that's been crazy to witness the last couple weeks. I'm like oh boy, so glad I'm not the boss man. I am okay with being slave labor. If I can make someone else's life easier, I'm good.
Sarah:It's a lot of fun doing that job. It's a hard job but it is fun trying to be a resource as farmers are making those tough decisions. Yeah, sure, well, this has been a super fun conversation, very interesting good yep, sesh yep, absolutely very glad to uh have you on. It's great to hear about your experiences, as you're learning um precision agriculture, um and applying your gis experiences um into the real world.
Sarah:It's going to be fun to watch you as you go forward learning the agronomy world as a whole into the real world. It's going to be fun to watch you as you go forward learning the agronomy world as a whole into the growing season. So it's a lot of fun.
Jodi:Yeah, thank you guys for having me. Thank you so much for your time and I'm so excited to see your agronomy videos this year.
Emma:I'm excited. It's a lot of pressure Speaking of where can folks find you?
Jodi:If they want to follow you along on social media, where should they find you?
Emma:So it's ag with Emma everywhere A G, not E G G.
Sarah:Ag with Emma spelled out.
Emma:So A G with Emma, but I'm on Tik TOK If it doesn't. I'm on Tik TOK If it gets banned or not. Um, I'm on X and YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is kind of my stepchild that I don't pay attention to, but it's there. I kind of that. I don't pay attention to, but it's there. My Instagram just cross posts on Facebook, perfect.
Jodi:Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys, for having me Remember. With GK Technology, we have a map and an app for that. We'll see you next time. No, I can't wait to get in the fields again.