Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal Ohio Ag Net | Ohio's Country Journal 
By Brianna Smith
Modern farm equipment records an incredible amount of information every time it enters the field. Yield monitors, planter sensors, and other precision agriculture technologies continuously generate data, yet much of that information goes unused.
James Uphaus, Ph.D., instructor of agronomy and digital agriculture at Rhodes State College, believes this data holds tremendous potential to help farmers better understand field variability, improve soil health, and make more informed management decisions. During a presentation at the 2026 Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference this past spring, Uphaus shared how farmers can leverage existing digital resources and on-farm data to benchmark soil health and identify opportunities hidden within their fields.
Q: Why is understanding field variation important when evaluating soil health?
A: “Variation is critical because if you have no variation, you really have no opportunity to learn. If every acre in a field yields exactly the same, you don’t know where you can improve. When we can measure variation and relate it back to our fields, we can start looking for opportunities, identifying underperforming areas, compare to the better yielding areas and figuring out why they’re underperforming.”
Q: Farmers often talk about field averages. Why can averages be misleading?
A: “We’ve trained ourselves to focus on the mean. During a tillage operation like strip-till, we might say a field averaged a gallon of fuel per acre, but that average doesn’t tell us whether there were areas that took a gallon and a half and others that only took a half gallon. If we compare the areas of high fuel consumption to grain yield, we may see those areas are less than the field average and investigate those areas. When we focus only on averages, we lose our understanding of variation, and that’s where the opportunities for improvement are.”
Q: What kinds of data are already being collected on farms today?
A: “Modern farm equipment is recording a tremendous amount of information. Yield monitors, planter systems, hydraulic downforce systems, fuel consumption during tillage and soil sensors are all generating data. Much of this is passive data. Farmers bought the equipment because it provided value in the field, but the data is still there in the background and can help inform future management decisions.”
Q: How can farmers use existing data to improve profitability?
A: “The goal is to use the information collected by the farmer to drive further investigation. Every one of those GPS points is associated with a location in the field, so now if we want to validate something, we can go back to that point and ask, ‘What is different here?’ We can look at aggregate stability, bulk density, tissue samples or conduct additional soil tests. We can use the information from the farmer to do a better job sampling, a better job building management zones, and a better job making decisions.”
Q: What digital tools are available to help farmers assess field variation and soil health?
A: “There are already a tremendous number of tools available. Modern equipment collects yield, planter, and machine data every time it goes through the field. Technologies like SmartFirmer, DeltaForce and Veris mapping systems can provide additional information about soil conditions, and publicly available resources such as national soil databases and Google Earth Pro can help visualize variability. The challenge isn’t collecting the data; it’s learning how to use it to make better decisions.”
Q: What role could artificial intelligence and digital tools play in the future of farming?
A: “The opportunity right now is amazing. With artificial intelligence tools and publicly available resources, farmers, students and agronomists have the opportunity to work with farmer data and bring value to agriculture. My goal is that eventually these tools will be web based and intuitive that a farmer can load their field boundaries and immediately begin understanding the useful variation in their fields and making better decisions.”
Q: Why do you believe digital tools are so important moving forward?
A: “There’s an enormous amount of information available, but much of it is locked away in a black box. The challenge is turning all those data points into useful information. My goal is to develop tools that help farmers and agronomists better understand field variation, make better decisions, and ultimately improve profitability and soil health. We need an army of field associates to be the boots on the ground to help farmers make more data driven decisions.”
