Achieving success with Variable Rate Fertilizers

Sustainable agriculture is a popular concept.  Two aspects of sustainable agriculture is be profitable and environmentally friendly. A rising technology for obtaining this is with the use of variable rate fertilizing (VRT), a type of precision agriculture,  rather than applying a uniform layer of fertilizer to a field (H-1).  The biggest challenge with this technology is determining the different zones recieving fertilizers. Common methods include satellite imagery, soil maps and general knowledge of area.  This study involved using multi variate statistics on the output from a digital elevation model to determine field variability.  The goal is to determine if these topographic attributes from the model form groups which can be used to determine the zones recieving variable amounts of fertilizers.

H-1.  Image showing zones receiving different rates of fertilizer.