How to Improve Farm Profit With GPS Landforming – OptiSurface in Press

OptiSurface Software has created over 400,000 acres of GPS landform designs around the world. Here are the top 8 things we have learned.

1. Water is king.  80% of yield variability & profit loss is due to too much or too little water. Yield maps show this. Focus on optimizing water management first.
2. Ponding kills profits. If water is standing in your fields 24 hrs after rainfall or irrigation, it is killing your profits. Typically 8%/day yield loss plus nitrogen loss, increased pest & disease, delayed planting, spraying & harvesting.
3. Subsurface (Tile) drainage is good but expensive, typically has lower ROI than GPS landforming and does not work well on heavy soils or limited elevation relief.
4. Ditching is good but can be a pain especially if they take out valuable crop area or restrict machinery access.
5. Surface drainage and irrigation problems can be solved with GPS landforming at low cost. Proven in many crops and farming styles, irrigated and unirrigated.
6. Lasers are dead. They only work in a straight plane. GPS allows you to follow curved topography with curved design surfaces.
7. Save up to 80% on earthworks and topsoil movement with OptiSurface designs & GPS machine control compared to other methods.
8. Software is not equal. Our competitors claim to have the same capability but they are weak imitators.  E.g. Trimble WM-Form produced 1000% more earthworks than OptiSurface on a recent drainage case study.