Tierra Plan is developing a custom field management solution for an independent agronomy provider built around the Esri ArcGIS platform. Called Field Analyst, it is a scalable GIS solution for managing and analyzing field data so growers can optimize soil treatments and yields. A suite of ArcGIS desktop tools and web maps lets agronomists and growers manage their soil data, yield, as-applied, EC data, generate nutrient maps, prescription files, management zones, and share data using online maps.

Field Analyst is an affordable alternative to expensive, proprietary systems COTS products. It greatly reduces the time to process and map each farm and field, saving time and money. Agronomists can map more acreage per year and deliver more accurate information.

The system includes a complete custom designed back-end database system, desktop tools, web, and mobile user interfaces. A suite of ArcGIS Server map services and geoprocessing services are published for web and desktop users. Users are now free to analyze, report, and map all their historic data without constraints.

A typical nutrient management deliverable to a grower includes a PDF document with nutrient surface maps for pH, Ca, N, P, K, and Mg; a boundary map showing sample locations with NAIPS imagery; Lime prescription and fertilizer prescription shapefiles used by spreaders to apply variable rate treatment; and an accompanying PDF treatment rate map. This entire process is now generated in Field Analyst and the ArcGIS platform. This offers the most flexibility in creating the surface maps and customizing the final treatment prescriptions, and growers can access all their maps and data online.