Who says a small business can’t be innovative? The Shelby County Co-op, one of the few ag cooperatives in Indiana still made up of only one county, stepped out to serve customers by offering special services for the first time this year.

“We offered a crop-imaging service to our customers by working with an aerial scouting company,” says Denney Frey, Shelby County Co-op’s general manager. “Several farmers took advantage of it and worked with us on the service.”

ONE-OF-A-KIND: This high-clearance rig was designed for use by the Shelby County Co-op this year. It has dual tanks so it can apply two products at once.

The co-op partnered with Air Scout to offer the scouting option by air, Frey says. Instead of satellite imagery, Air Scout provides images of crop fields during the growing season on a timely basis using primarily airplane flights.

One image Air Scout offers is called "advanced digital vegetation index," Frey explains. An ADVI image gives information similar to what satellites give with normalized difference vegetation index, commonly called NDVI.

Scout from the air

Air Scout provided images in various forms so agronomists and crop consultants could work with customers to determine if additional inputs were needed during the growing season. For example, if information obtained through the flights indicated nitrogen might be a limiting factor in one or more cornfields, or even in parts of only one field, agronomists could share that with farmers so they could decide if they wanted to make a late-season application and add N to their crop.

Working with a new rig from Hagie, designed in part with Air Scout, the co-op also offered nitrogen application in mid- to late season as either a rescue treatment or as part of a planned program. One of the farmers the co-op works with, Ken Simpson, Morristown, is conducting a field-size research trial to determine if planned late-season N applications pay. The co-op brought its rig out to the plot to make an application so Simpson, working with Purdue University Extension agronomists Bob Nielsen and Jim Camberato, could compare applying N with Y-Drops from 360 Yield Center, equipped on the co-op rig, with N application by coulter, set up on Simpson’s rig.

Unique machine

The rig the co-op ran this summer has dual tanks so it can hold different products. In fact, it was possible to apply four products on one trip in some cases, Frey says.

“We have the capability to apply products in a single pass. You can provide nutrients for foliar feeding plus an insecticide and a fungicide, all in one pass if you choose.”

The rig has two booms. When applying with Y-Drops, the applicator can use the spray nozzles on what 360 Yield Center calls the "undercover application site." Located about halfway up the metal Y-Drop tube, three nozzles spray material under the crop canopy, with the help of a crop shield on one side of the nozzles.

“It produces a fine mist, which gives coverage,” Frey says.

He notes the plan is to take what they learned from scouting and applications this year and apply it to the 2017 season.