Canola School: Increasing yield starts with precise soil samples

Soil sampling is perhaps now easier than ever before, and field sampling can now go much further than it used to in regards to mapping and data. Farmers and agronomists can, through modern soil sampling, learn more about the nutrient profile of soil but how samples are taken is changing.
Generally, soil sampling has been accomplished using a composite sample of the field through cores that are deposited into a bucket. A sample from that bucket is then sent off to the lab. Using the results of these samples, farmers make decisions on field-wide fertility programs. More intensive sampling, however, that involves sending in samples from specific areas of the field using GPS coordinates, is proving to be profitable new approach for canola growers.
Farmers are matching the soil sample point with the yield at that same spot and it is helping them to determine what is happening to cause the yield differences, says Jason Casselman of the Canola Council of Canada, in this episode of RealAgriculture's Canola School. This soil data is helping growers to understand why there is such yield variation across a field.
Correlating a soil sample data point with a yield point in specific areas of a field as opposed to composite sampling has also shown that there are interactions between the ratios of different nutrients that seem to contribute to higher yields. Identifying these ratios on a field-by-field basis is an opportunity for growers to do research on their own to help increase yields, Casselman says.
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