What if our lives were bound by only relative measures?

In Agriculture, most Farmers measure the vital moisture in their soil only by relative measures with soil moisture sensors or drones or even sticks thrust into the soil. AquaSpy is very unique and different in that we dissect and segregate the soil into 12 distinct layers of earth and automatically gauge the full and empty positions of each layer of soil from which the plant withdraws its’ vital nutrients, as well as whether that layer is only partially full (like ¼, 1/2 , ¾ , etc.) and whether the active root systems is drawing it down and how fast it may deplete its’ ability to withdraw liquid energy before the crop experiences yield degradation.

This correlates directly to the crop yield because of course a crop cannot grow sucking only air from its’ intake system.

When superior, easy to read, exact and inexpensive alternatives exist to laboring through with accepting only relative measures on the very subject that has the most direct influence upon the crop yield and therefore the output and profitability of the entirety of the Farmers’ efforts, it would be like:

Driving your car by only guessing how much gas was in the tank or only knowing that you have ½ of what you had yesterday.

Telling your kids that they shouldn’t need their coats today as it will be twice as warm today as it was yesterday (4 degrees all the way up to 8).

On the annual car vacation, the answer to the ubiquitous;” are we there yet” is “we are twice as far as we were the last time you asked.”

Report cards might state that she did better than last time in English but only half as good in math.

You might have to pay “a little bit more in taxes,” but they are going up at the smallest rate that they ever have.

I’m not exactly sure how old I am but it seems every year I get older faster.

I think I deserve a raise because I did twice as much work today than I did yesterday.

It might actually make my golf game more enjoyable though because I’d feel better if all I knew was that I did lots better than I did last time.

Though I suspect I’d begin to mis-trust my banker if he said my bank account was the highest it’s ever been but it is depleting at a faster rate than ever before.

When my Doctor tells me my blood sugar is high but getting higher at a slower pace than ever before, should I feel good or bad about that?

So you see, it’s all relative and except for the annual Thanksgiving dinner, relatives can be good or bad but may behave better or worse than they did last year when Uncle John got drunk and spilled half the gravy dish all over the white tablecloth (I think it was half, but there was a lot less left to go around).

If I’m growing a crop, and my entire income depends upon the best yield I can possibly achieve, and I can know exactly where the active roots zones are and if and how much nutrient resides in that zone and that directly translates into ensuring the biggest, strongest crop possible, I don’t want to leave it to chance if I can see the gauge and what to do about it, but that’s just me.

I’m a relatively careful and precise guy.

As you install an AquaSpy Soil Monitoring System you may ask yourself, how accurate does it actually measure?  The answer may surprise you:  the AquaSpy Vector probe is very accurate but that is not what actually matters.

Here is why.  Soil probes pick up information from the soil using different methods.  Most probe systems are using the fact that water has a much higher permittivity than dry soil.  Therefore, the measurement that comes out of the probe is not truly a measurement of water but of soil permittivity. The probe has no means of separating the permittivity from soil and other solids from water permittivity.  Fortunately, the water permittivity is significantly higher than solid permittivity. To make matters more difficult, the measured permittivity has two main components – water and electrical conductivity (EC).  Most multi-sensor probes are poorly designed and cannot separate the permittivity measurement into moisture and conductivity.  Additionally, some probes have significant temperature drift on the measurement.  That all boils down to:

• Can your probe separate moisture from conductivity?
• Does it provide accurate measurements when the ambient temperature changes (for all sensors)?
• Is the sensor capable of repeating the same measurement with minimum sample to sample variation?
• Will the probe require recalibration with each install?

The AquaSpy Vector probe can separate moisture from conductivity, it has no temperature drift, and it only needs one calibration at our manufacturing location. The sample to sample variation is below 0.05%

Once you have a probe that can accurately measure moisture you should think you are all set. But that is actually not the case.  Each sensor is placed in a particular soil condition that has a certain field capacity or full point (water holding capacity).  So even if you know the moisture level, it does not say anything about how much moisture is actually available. It’s just a number. You still need to figure out how much water can the soil hold, and additionally, you also need to know when the particular crop will run out of water given the soil it’s planted in.

Most systems will just give you a reading, say 65. That is a dimensionless number. It’s usually derived from the permittivity reading that the sensor observed. In that case, water represents a reading ~80 (depending on temperature) and a number of 1 represent air.  Some systems will claim that they can convert that reading to inches of water, but that is simply not possible unless you are in a controlled lab condition.  However, the AquaSpy system has a unique and patented method of automatically calculating how much water is available. To go even further, the system will also provide you with the amount of water in the active root zone.

Conclusion:

Measuring the soil permittivity is almost meaningless. Even if you can measure it very accurately. Yes, it indicates how much water there may be available; however, the data must be post processed to turn it into something that accurately depicts what is truly available to the plant.

As the only system on the market, the AquaSpy system does indeed provide this information in a concise and at-a-glance user interface using 12 sensors across 48”.  Through our proprietary technology, AquaSpy delivers the most meaningful data to enable our growers to control what they can and boost yields. The accuracy is so good that sensor data from each layer zone has its own full and refill points so holding capacity determines soil type by layer, rather than proclaiming soil type and having the sensor calibrated to measure moisture content on a scale calibrated for that proclaimed soil type. The AquaSpy probe is completely unique in the current market space for being cost effective, accurate, and multi-dimensional.

Think of Your Entire Field as Your Gas Tank

Try to imagine our vehicle centric world without some of the instruments and gauges that someone once invented and that today we take completely for granted.

Without something as simple as a speedometer, we would all go as fast as we judged possible. Turn signals are another simple invention, but without them…well the ensuing chaos is not only easy to imagine but actual reality.

Without the gas gauge in our cars, we wouldn’t know how close to full or how close to empty we are and imaginably we would stop often to “top it off” just in case we might be running low. As expensive and inefficient as that would be, there is no alternative short of running out of gas altogether.

Many of these elements of “gaugelessness” exist for today’s Farmer because in that world, those very basic and elemental gauges and instruments have not yet caught up to the Farm.

AquaSpy’s Dual Moisture Gauge provides separate moisture level readings for the Active Root Zone and the entire soil profile, so you can see the whole picture. Roots often interact at 4, 5 or 6 foot depths and each layer of the soil is its’ own distinct environment, so while the top may appear parched, the Active Root Zone may well be quite sufficiently nourished.

Volumetric Soil Moisture (VSM) requires knowledge of soil type, crop type, and water holding capacity for each layer in the soil which is not practical for typical commercial installations. However, by using an automated system that first detects rooting depth, then sensor by sensor detects Full Point (field capacity), and then derives the Refill Point, AquaSpy can accurately provide a measure of available moisture both in the Active Root Zone and in the entire soil profile.

The Active Root Zone is your measurement window. The plant can only draw water and nutrients from its roots; therefore, your system must know how deep your roots truly are compared to how much energy is present in that zone from which the roots can withdraw nutrients. The plant tells you when it needs more water by its root behavior. If the root has energy within its Active Root Zone, high growth ensues. Many people are misled by having a wet soil but a shallow root system that cannot access this moisture. As a result, plants can still run out of available moisture and nutrients, which manifests in yield loss.

You need to know the Active Root Zone to accurately apply the right amount of water at the right time to ensure that water and nutrients penetrate deep enough to maximize growth but nothing goes so deep it is wasted to leaching and drainage.

Every calculation of soil moisture and EC must be based on matching the Active Root Zone to the correct depth of moisture and nutrient penetration in the soil

The First Multi-Sensor Probe in the World to Accurately Separate Moisture from Conductivity

AquaSpy’s multi-sensor probe is a vertical 12 sensor probe which measures moisture, EC, and temperature at every 4 inches, for a total of 48”. The top sensor can be at any desired level.

All of the processing intelligence is centralized in the micro-processor located in the communications tower which also houses the cellular modem and solar powered battery with best in class cellular reception thus providing unparalleled connectivity to hard-to-reach cell towers.

Our probe is both simple and inexpensive because one high quality quadrature measurement circuit controls all 12 of the 4 inch measurement zones by measuring soil moisture, temperature, and EC distinctly and separately.

Unlike traditional sensor probes, ours measures moisture in the soil perfectly linear in all soil types without being influenced by varying EC levels. The data is presented as a dimensionless number where 0 represents air and 100 represents full water saturation. The sensor is accurate and suitable for all soil types without any additional calibration. The accuracy is so good that sensor data from each layer zone has its own full and refill points so holding capacity determines soil type by layer rather than proclaiming soil type and having the sensor calibrated to measure moisture content on a scale calibrated for that proclaimed soil type.

Most importantly, this measurement type allows complete separation of moisture and EC values. The measured EC (representing salt, nitrates, phosphates and other non-water elements resident in the soil) is presented in Siemens per meter (S/m).

The Aquaspy probe is completely unique in the current market space for being cost effective, accurate, and multi-dimensional.

I’m not exactly sure what Adele is rolling in but whatever it is, she is rolling in the deep. When Sarah Palin couldn’t tell Katie Couric which magazines she reads, she was thought to be out of her depth. When Mathew McCaughey went deep into Interstellar space, he was discerning the intricacies of the space time continuum. When the kid in the Allstate commercial sees his Dad driving up after he has dented the family car, his eyes widen in the realization he is in deep s**t.

The political scene in this country has devolved into deep divisions of red and blue with passions also running deep.

When my wife has now painted the side of our garage entrance dark Audi blue for the third time, that is a matter of depth perception (or the damn garage is just not wide enough if you ask her).

So deep matters… deeply and colorfully. It has many uses and many adaptations all implying a richness or severity or in other words another dimension altogether.

Ironically though, depth seems to be largely ignored or not thought about much at all when it comes to our soil and growing our crops within their depths. Unless you are a worm or a gopher, you probably don’t think much about underground because let’s face it, there are more interesting places in the world.

Underground conjures up thoughts (some deep ones), of the underground economy or some radical political cause. If you Google underground, the top subjects return railroad, printing, weather, and cupcakes. The thought of an underground cupcake didn’t inspire me to run out to get one but in fact it is a bakery in my home State of Indiana ( Bloomington) but that’s an hour drive from here so maybe not right this moment.

Back to Growing crops though, it turns out that depth is one of the things that matter the very most and of course it is because underground is where the crops send their roots to forage for sustenance.

The subtle thing here though is that to a crop and its’ active root zone, the key as in real estate is….location, location, location. In Agriculture however, the location that matters is depth, depth, depth; not the intersection of dumb and luck. It’s the strategic timing of the right depth at the right time.

When the active root zone happens to coincide with the liquid nutrient at the time and place (depth) at which they are attempting to absorb those nutrients, magic happens.

Over thousands of fields now as we comb through the data, we are finding a strong correlation to yields of 20% and more when the crop can obtain the sustenance it seeks throughout its’ various daily growth stages.

Obviously, crops and humans too are made mostly of water and if you want growth, of course you feed the organism. That allows the uptake and that manifests in superior yield.

Think of it as the Underground Cupcake for corn, cotton, and soy. Timing and depth are everything.

Now back to more pressing deep thoughts for me…..do I paint my garage dark blue or go with a nice garage colored beige on the Audi?

Sometimes you do all the right things and conform to every conventional wisdom and have nothing special to show for it. You study, hire the best minds with whom to consult, buy the very best seed, with the very best pesticides and chemicals, plant at the right time with the right spacing, diligently fight off weeds and gophers, irrigate religiously and harvest a modest or even weak crop.

So you pick up your chin, take your best efforts to market and salvage what you can for this year with the optimism and conviction that next year things will be better. Next year, nature will cooperate.

After all, you can’t control the weather anyway and Mother Nature is fickle and there is always next year when things are due to conspire to produce a bumper crop with record commodity prices.

As a lifelong Cub fan, believe me I know all about belief and optimism and “wait till next year”. Sometimes though, you have to take matters into your own hands and make your own luck.

Sometimes down is up and up is down like the line in the song by the Kinks, “It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world” except not for your own life and livelihood.

Instead of “up periscope,” what if you flipped that to “down periscope”? What if the key to the best yield possible was to look down, deep down into the soil for the key to superior yield?

With thousands of fields now under AquaSpy data service management, we have found a direct correlation to yield by looking at what the roots experience while they forage deep within the soil for nourishment to take up water and nutrients to produce outstanding yield.

The active root zone is of course the plants’ way of reaching out to its’ environment to absorb vital and life nurturing nutrients during its’ short and finite lifespan.

It’s not such a mixed up jumbled up world if down is actually up because if the plant reaches down to absorb nutrients and if those nutrients are actually there when the roots seeks them, the plants grows faster and stronger and bigger. Yield then is up, so maybe sometimes down actually is up.

That of course translates ultimately to yield at harvest time and that’s the name of the game; not “wait till next year”.

Try it and see for yourself.

If you invest tens of thousands of dollars in seed and chemicals and equipment and land, you are serious about your craft and deserve a serious return on that investment. Why would you then leave it to chance that those inputs all just happen to be at the right place at the right depth and at the right time to actually make their way back into the plant?

Maybe Alice had it right in Wonderland after all, there’s a Mad Hatter down there who is in a hurry and he isn’t going to wait until next year.

Among the eternal questions mankind has pondered along with why are we here and to what purpose and how did life itself begin, is a seemingly more “down to Earth” question of how are we similar and how are we different and why?

This is of course the fascinating and endless debate about nature and nurture and causal or correlative relationships between how and why we are the particular and specific individuals we have each become.

There doesn’t appear to be any formula yet for how you get your child to possess a 99 MPH fastball or to progress into a World Class pianist or scientist. There are so many studies relative to twins and triplets where the same traits strongly prevail despite being raised separately by different parents in different locales. However, the opposite condition where two exact replicates raised in the same place by the same parents produces drastically different human beings.

Those countervailing studies are endlessly fascinating, because in part we are all human beings and we are all curious as to how our individuality produces us uniquely yet our conditions and dispositions in many ways make us more alike than dissimilar (even if we don’t want to acquiesce to possessing any of the herd mentality ).

What about studies involving thousands and tens of thousands of exact twin replicas where the genetics are exactly the same while the environment is also precisely the same?

Okay now we have shifted of course away from the human condition making it slightly less intriguing to the average everyday individual but very important and efficient to be understood and conquered by the Farmer. Crops are grown by the hundreds of thousands every year in the exact same fields and often with the exact same genetics (seed and chemicals). Yet one year may produce a bumper crop and another may be a relative or even absolute bust.

The issue at hand is the separation of nature and nurture and controlling all of the variables that contribute to that variation in yield. In Agriculture we hear a cacophony of voices claiming their particular brand of seed or fertilizer or pest control or even type of water is what drives yield upward. It must be very confusing and dispiriting to constantly hear that self-serving refrain of any and every Supplier touting yield improvement.

Frustratingly, even when a side by side comparison is done showing an improved yield from one treatment contrasted to another, there is always the lingering doubt that the superior performance may have been luck or timing or weather or myriad other variables contributing to one outcome or another. This might have been a better year or that may have been the soil or the wind or the evaporation or the seed type or just a good or bad year for growing.

It requires us to separate nature from nurture in order to begin to get a grasp on causal or correlative relationships between all the variables and yield.

It is absolutely true that nature is a big determinant upon the outcome of any particular season’s crop yield. Little pesky things like seed genetics, water, sunshine, wind and weather do play a big role. So let’s set weather aside for a moment while we work toward harnessing technology to control that too (and with the new Global Climate agreements recently concluded in Paris, we can readily see the planet’s weather is almost already within our greedy little grasp).

If nature is for the moment uncontrollable, it is also true that nurture is not uncontrollable and the behaviors we use that are determinant upon human strategies and actions are real, tangible, measurable and controllable. In other words, how we nurture the crop is both within our control and very impactful on whether or not the yield is truly the best it could and should be, within the constraints of as yet un-tamed nature.

The good news is that we now know the most salient impact upon positive yield influence is simply feeding the active root zone. Unlike humans, crops feed by extracting nutrients from the soil by virtue of their roots foraging ever deeper within the soil because they don’t have feet, hands and mouths in search of sustenance as we do.

With literally thousands of fields of experience, our data correlates to the highest yields belonging to those fields who simply had the liquid nutrients (water and nitrates) available to the root when and where (at depth), it was seeking to uptake the sustenance imperative to its’ growth and survival. It was not enough just to put water and nutrients on the top of the soil and hope they migrated down to the exact depth at which the active root zone was foraging (though by pure luck that confluence of nutrient and active root zone do match up serendipitously), but rather that those growers who knew where the active root zone was feeding and put the water and chemicals in that layer of depth more consistently than those who relied upon pure chance for supply to meet demand, got far greater yield consistently.

There are other contributing factors too such as not letting salts build up in the lower depths so as to impede the plants’ ability to uptake those nutrients in the active root zone but by far, the best yields attainable and within the Growers’ own control of how he elects to nurture his crops was simply putting their money where their crops’ mouth is. So not that hard and not that complicated but yield improvements of 20% and higher are routinely achieved this way regardless of which type of seed or chemical was chosen (though as part of the nature component these certainly have their impact as well).

So back to our twins and triplets, the challenge of understanding the nature/nurture components in them are far harder and far more intriguing. If you thought about their lifespan (maybe 80 to 100 years contrasted to maybe 100 days for a crop), and somehow you only put food in their actual hungry mouths by pure chance, you can imagine how stunted or even threatened their health would be. It’s like saying, I always put food on the table but if they don’t eat it, what can I do about it? Well if they had no ability to consume the food other than by it being near enough their mouth that they can partake of it, you would quickly devise methods to make mouth meet food in space and time.

The exact same holds true for crops; don’t just put the food on the table, ensure it is getting into their mouths. Your reward will be consistently and substantially higher yield.

It’s half past sun up; do you know where your roots are???

Want Yield? Put your money where your crops’ mouths’ are.

Like humans, crops have to absorb nutrients to flourish and grow. Unlike us, they must rely upon their roots to forage for liquid sustenance throughout the various depths of soil zones where they eat. Conversely we enjoy the advantage of employing our arms and legs to seek and obtain food to deposit into our mouths.

We may live 80 or more years while most crops may only exist for a little over 100 days or so.

We are made of approximately 2/3rds water while most crops are over 80% to 90% water. So what we have found from having thousands of fields under our control, is that the data supports a strong correlation of 20% and higher yields for those fields where the Grower ensured that he deposited and maintained sufficient liquidified nutrients in the active root zone at the depth at which the root system was currently seeking to absorb that energy for growth on that particular day.

There are many variables and combinations of seed, chemicals, sunlight, and processes which conspire to make a poor, average or excellent yield but by far the strongest correlation we have seen in all of the data we have correlated thus far is as simple as putting your money where your mouth is (well your crops’ mouths’ anyway).

It really is pretty logical and straightforward though. They are comprised almost entirely of water. They actively forage for that nutrient throughout ever deepening soil layers in order to absorb that of which they are mostly made. If it is there for them to take up, they do and it becomes the main part of their make-up. The more they can withdraw from the soil bank, the bigger and healthier they will become.

It’s yield time; do you know where your roots are?

Everyone is quite familiar with and has a FICO score that is essentially a measure of past financial behavior and used as a predictor of future financial behavior in order to price risk into the credit equation.

Similarly, though not as ubiquitous or well known; driving scores begin to reflect how, when and where you drive in order to help insurance Companies more fairly and accurately price the risk they take by insuring you as a driver. Many large fleets are self insured so these measures of past behavior behind the wheel have an added advantage of modifying those tendencies which can ultimately prove to be costly or even fatal.

If you measure something, by its’ very nature the implication is that this something now measured is in fact important and so if it matters, we humans tend to pay attention to it and often our competitive nature engages to make what was once poor become good, then good becomes great and then great may evolve into World Class.

Once several decades ago, a young assembly line supervisor decided he wanted to improve the productivity on his assembly line and noticed that the lighting was rather dim and made the place feel old, dark and neglected. So he arranged to have new and incremental lighting installed and to his delight, productivity did indeed improve. Workers could see more easily and their attitudes brightened and the pace picked up.

Encouraged by this positive reinforcement, he had his industrial engineers tracking the workers’ movements, and processes and ultimate production output. He thought if the first “enlightenment” produced better results, maybe more was better, so he put in yet more new lighting.

Can you believe the output went up yet again?

Now feeling quite confident and proud of his clever initiatives, he decided to press the issue and do it once again, expecting at some point to hit the law of diminishing returns.

Can you guess what happened? It went up again.

Now, however some doubt began to creep into his mind about his cleverness because the factory floor was now obnoxiously bright. The atmosphere was somewhat warm and uncomfortable with all of those bright lights burning away.

So he turned off some of the lights and….you guessed it; production went up once again.

Many of you know this story as The Hawthorne Effect and of course it was never the lighting that increased the production but rather that people were watching and measuring and the workers realized that what they did actually mattered and that someone cared.

So we eventually outsourced all of their jobs overseas and laid them off to begin the decline of our middle class economy but that is a rant for a different day.

We are now starting to bring this measuring methodology into the agricultural space which I view as a factory without a roof that cannot just be outsourced overseas. Agriculture is of course growing things so measures get clouded by nature.

If you were to obtain an exceptionally good yield, you might attribute that to the seed, or the chemicals, or the sunshine producing advantageous growing degree days. There are myriad factors which contribute to a poor, a good or an outstanding yield. As of yet, we cannot control the heat or humidity or wind and despite whatever seed you elect to plant with its’ inherent DNA characteristics, the nature part of the yield equation is still uncontrollable.

However, the nurture part of the yield result is absolutely measurable and controllable. What you elect to do with that seed and soil and sunshine makes a very large contribution to the ultimate yield and whether it turns out average or great or fails altogether.

These behaviors that contribute to achieving the best yield nature will allow include primarily ensuring that the liquid nutrients the crop withdraws from the soil bank are present at the time and at the depth where the active root zone seeks to obtain them in each and every day throughout the growing phase.

Other behaviors such as not allowing salts to build up impeding the roots’ ability to withdraw the nutrients and having sufficient nitrates available in the active root zone also conspire to produce yields which are consistently 20% better than those not nurtured efficiently. Of course weed control and pest control and disease monitoring are all contributing nurturing factors as well.

Unlike, the FICO score which largely inures to the benefit of the bank or the driving score which is a great assist to the insurance industry, the YES! (Yield Efficiency Score) is a tool for and to the benefit of the Farmer solely himself.

The Farmer helps himself immensely by achieving the highest yield nature will allow. The Farmer himself bears the brunt of poor or deficient nurturing that manifests in lower yield when it didn’t have to be that way. By automatically measuring the things are imperative to producing the highest yield possible, the Farmer keeps himself in touch engaged and in check with diligently nurturing his crops.

Now I’m not implying that each plant in his many rows of crops will know that he cares and is measuring progress like the now outsourced workers on that ancient production line, but they will respond affirmatively and in that way, he can see every day how the root system responded to the treatment as that is the way the crops actually whisper to him daily.

This is the only way the crop has to speak to him at this point but feedback is feedback and it greatly pays off at the end.

Maybe someday technology will find a better way for crops to speak to us more directly, but right now we are working on self driving cars and saving the planet. Personally I’d like to get my dog to talk but that’s just me.

Crop whispering works and although the crop doesn’t know it is being watched and measured, it will respond to you the only way it can; higher and healthier growth which is plant speak for yield.