177 Seeds of Change Ernst Seeds Uses Data-Driven Approach to Restore Habitats Every Monday and Wednesday, the team at Ernst Conservation Seeds gathers around maps to discuss which fields to harvest, which fields need treatments, and where to plant new crops. On this 10,000-acre farm near the small town of Meadville, Pennsylvania, the company pioneered the propagation of 180 species of native wildflowers, grasses, and wetland plants to revive degraded land and provide wildlife habitat. Now, the plants Ernst Seeds propagates are in high demand. Pollinator planting has become a trend worldwide, with the growing realization that flying bugs and birds are key to the survival of three-quarters of the world’s plants, including many we eat. Native plants, too, are being valued for nature-based solutions to protect soils from erosion and to filter pollutants from stormwater. Across its operation, Ernst Seeds embraces the science of agronomy and the use of GIS technology to understand native plant species and grow them better, faster, and less expensively. There’s a lot of experimentation that goes into growing native seeds and designing the right mix for each restoration project. “What we’re doing is going out and looking at existing plant communities to see what species grow together and how they’re doing it,” said Andy Ernst, vice president of Ernst Seeds. “Then there are lessons from our farming failures and successes. We make a lot of discoveries in our fields when we map yield data and the treatments we applied.” Improving Plant Propagation Typically, large farms focus on commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, or cotton. At Ernst Seeds, the growing cycles of 180 species are tracked across 1,300 fields and 15 square miles. “I realized a long time ago that with the complexity of our farm, we needed software to track it,” Ernst said. His early forays into traditional farm management software products were frustrating as most could not support so many crops. The software lacked the data management and analysis capabilities needed to discern best practices for seed crops no one else was growing. Then in 2015, Ernst Seeds started using GIS. For operations, the ability to see fertilizer and spray assignments on smart maps helped the company identify places that required more or less treatment. “There are a lot of accidental experiments when a row is skipped, there’s overlap, or a different chemistry is used. When we go out in the field, we can see areas that thrive and other areas that do poorly. With GIS, we can answer why.” — Andy Ernst, vice president, Ernst Seeds Katy Flaherty, an agronomy expert and the GIS manager at Ernst Seeds, developed a GIS-powered work order management system that guides each phase of production, from planting and fertilizing to applying pesticides and harvesting. The system uses a combination of ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS Field Maps, and ArcGIS Dashboards to record data and visualize trends. Flaherty also uses ArcGIS Pro to analyze data from the field, layering it with historical crop records and real-time soil and weather data to uncover correlations. “When we plan our fields across four counties, there are significant differences in what crops do well from north to south,” Flaherty said. “It’s very spatial aware farming, and that knowledge transfers to recommendations for customers.” Operating Farms and Timberlands More Efficiently
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