searaver1

Drunk agronomist here. Where I am the most expensive single pesticide is roughly $75 per acre. 120 acres per a field, means $9,000 per field. however, if plant health was indicative of pest population, some places apply up to 5 insecticides per season, which means to spot treat could save you easily 36000 assuming you only spray 20% of the field. For yield, in a decent year crops can fetch $5,000 per acre. Again, at 120 acres per field, that can run up to a max of $600,000 per field. This means a % yield increase of 12% per field due to chemical is $50,000 in yields. And that just a 120 acre field! If he's farming 8,000 acres, then we're talking about 66 times these numbers! Chemicals are expensive. Farming is a gamble, and most of the time the public doesn't come close to paying the "real value" of the food they eat. Yay subsidies!

It takes a farmer to understand how much someone pays in fertilizer per year. 100K? Thats lowballing by a huge amount!

Does this mean you guys do soil zone analysis based on your images? Do you do soil nutrient analysis to judge specific areas, then generalize slightly to soil types? What do you use to distinguish between the soil types? How do you determine organic matter, and other nutrients besides just assuming, or do you just use the aerial images to make the zones you then sample independently?

I love your work on breaking bad. Eyebrows for days. Do you ever see Bryan Cranston and just see the dad from Malcolm in the Middle?

Also, I was at Argonne about six months ago working on some paleobotanical specimens. I don't think I saw you, but it's cool to think for a short time we probably both drank coffee from the same coffee cart.