Farming - Soils, Management Zones, Crop Health and Crop History

The Farming kit tells you about one field at a time: what soil it has, how the crop is growing, which parts do better or worse, and what was planted there. Draw a field (or pick one you already drew) and the kit can add:

• Soils: a map of the soils in the field.
• Zones: management zones for variable-rate seeding and fertilizer, which you can export as a shapefile.
• Crop health: how green and vigorous the crop is, from satellite images taken every few days.
• Crop history: what was planted each year (US).

It works for fields anywhere in the world. Some reports have more detail in the United States, as explained below.

Who can use it

Farming is a Pro Business kit. Every signed-in account also gets 3 free field reports to try it. Each run of any report uses one. A run that fails does not use one. The kit shows how many free reports you have left.

A field can be up to 5,000 acres (about 2,000 hectares). Crop health and satellite zones work on fields up to 2,000 acres.

Add the kit

1. Open Maps & Data and go to the Kits tab.
2. Find Farming and click Use Kit.

You can also right-click a polygon, rectangle or circle on your map and choose Analyze field.

Choose the field

• Use selected shape: opens a list of the areas on your map. Click one, or click Select on map and then click the field on the map.
• Draw field: click the map to outline the field, then click the first point to finish.

The chosen field shows under the buttons with its icon, name and size.

Soils

In the United States, the soil map comes from the USDA soil survey (SSURGO). Each soil in the field shows its:

• Crop productivity (NCCPI, from 0 to 1; 0.6 and up is high).
• Available water in the top 100 cm (40 in).
• Drainage class and hydrologic group (A drains fastest, D slowest).
• Capability class and farmland class (for example prime farmland).

Use Color by to color the map by crop productivity, drainage, hydrologic group or farmland class.

Everywhere else, the soil map comes from SoilGrids, a world soil model at 250 m. It shows the topsoil (the top 30 cm): texture (for example silt loam), soil group, clay, sand and silt, organic carbon, pH and CEC. Color by texture, organic carbon or pH. SoilGrids describes the field's soil well, but at 250 m it cannot draw soil boundaries inside a small field.

Zones

Zones splits the field into 2 to 6 management zones, from the lowest to the highest, for variable-rate seeding and fertilizer.

Choose what the zones are Based on:

• Best available: soil crop productivity where the US soil survey covers the field, and satellite crop vigour everywhere else.
• Soil crop productivity (US) or Soil water-holding capacity (US): from the USDA soil survey. For productivity, you can also pick the Crop (corn, soybeans, cotton or small grains).
• Satellite crop vigour: from three seasons of Sentinel-2 satellite images. Each part of the field is compared with the field average at the height of each season, so parts that are always stronger or weaker show up as zones. This works anywhere in the world.

Click Export zones (shapefile) to download the zones as a .zip shapefile for John Deere Operations Center, Climate FieldView, Trimble and other farm software. Each zone carries its number, label, values and acres.

Crop health

Crop health shows how green and vigorous the crop is, from Sentinel-2 satellite images (10 m pixels) taken every few days, anywhere in the world. The kit uses the latest clear day and leaves out clouds and their shadows.

• Color by Crop vigour (NDVI) shows the vigour itself, from bare soil to very dense crop.
• Color by Variation within the field compares each spot with the rest of the field, so weak spots stand out at any time in the season. Low spots are where to scout.

The panel shows the mean NDVI and a chart of the field's NDVI over the last 12 months: it rises as the crop grows, peaks, and falls as it ripens or is harvested. Pick a day in Image date to map that day instead.

NDVI	What it usually means
Under 0.2	Bare soil or residue
0.2 to 0.4	Sparse or stressed crop
0.4 to 0.6	Moderate canopy
0.6 to 0.8	Healthy crop
Over 0.8	Very dense crop

NDVI shows how green the crop is, not the yield or the cause of a problem. Use it to decide where to look.

Crop history

Crop history lists what was planted in the field each year from 2016 to the latest season, from the USDA Cropland Data Layer, and maps the crops of one season. Choose that season in Map year: it lists every year we have and starts on the newest. It covers the lower 48 US states only.

Where the results go

Everything goes into a Farming folder, with a folder for each field and a folder for each run. Soils and zones are areas you can restyle. Crop health and crop history are image layers, locked so they stay lined up with the map. Each run also adds a report card next to the area, with the same numbers, legend and charts as the panel. It is saved with the map, so anyone who opens or shares the map sees the report without opening the kit. The numbers are also saved in each layer's description.

Where the data comes from

• US soils: Soil Survey Staff, USDA NRCS, Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) Database.
• World soils: SoilGrids 2.0, ISRIC World Soil Information (CC BY 4.0).
• Crop health and satellite zones: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (ESA), read from the Sentinel-2 archive on AWS Open Data.
• Crop history: USDA NASS Cropland Data Layer.

Results are estimates from survey, model and satellite data. They are not a soil test or a yield map. Check zones against your own yield data before you use them.

Ask Scribble

You can also ask Scribble, the AI assistant, for example: "make 3 zones for this field for corn", "how is the crop doing in this field?" or "what was planted here last year?" with your field selected.