Yield Monitoring and Mapping: How Does it Help Farmers?

The four essential components of yield monitoring and mapping are the global positioning system (GPS) receiver, mass flow sensor, yield monitor, and moisture sensor.

FREMONT, CA: Information technology has become a critical tool for precision farming since the early 1990s. Yield monitoring and mapping is one of the most widely used tools in agriculture. It tracks crop yields, combines speed, grain moisture, elevation, and other pertinent information in a specific field using a combination of GPS technology and physical sensors. Farmers have recently begun to recognize all of the advantages that this type of technology offers and why it is worthwhile to invest in.

Yield monitoring allows farmers to learn more about their fields and crops while also developing site-specific crop management strategies. The yield monitoring system reveals the regional and temporal variability in crop yields, which is one of its key advantages. The yield maps are the monitoring's final products, and they have a significant impact on decision-making. Sensors on combined harvesters or tractors must be accurately calibrated with minimal systematic errors to provide qualitative information and depict yield variance.

However, some inaccuracies are unavoidable, such as varying swath widths, imprecise location data, grain flow, and moisture delays, velocity problems, and so on. These incorrect data must be corrected. There is software designed explicitly for this purpose, and it can be a useful tool for dealing with large amounts of data and comprehending acquired data. After this data has been cleansed, the crop's ranges and limits can be applied to other yield data.

The four essential components of yield monitoring and mapping are the GPS receiver, mass flow sensor, yield monitor, and moisture sensor. During the harvest, these technologies are installed on a combine harvester and are in use. Sensors collect data, which is then saved in a device inside the combine. A mass flow sensor gives the yield monitor data to continuously compute how much grain is being fed into the combine. The moisture sensor collects the most critical data for a farmer in a variety of ways. A farmer can use this information to get the best market price for their product.

A GPS receiver is a remote sensor that measures the position of a combine, altitude, speed, and other variables. It stores geo-referenced information that can be turned into useful maps for farmers to use. A yield monitor is a display mounted within the cab of a combine that enables a farmer to observe real-time information about his field and react swiftly if a technical issue arises.