What is Prescription Farming?

Here's what Prescription Farming can do for you:

Boost Productivity
Increase Profitability
Ensure Sustainability

As well as a feel for the land and your particular enterprise, farming today requires the ability to manage your business for both environmental and financial sustainability. The principle behind Prescription Farming is simple, but very effective: if you have better information about the state of your soil, your crops and pastures, and the factors that influence target yields; you can make better decisions about nutrient and other inputs, and achieve better and more sustainable results.

Tropigro is committed to developing this approach across the whole range of farm inputs. However, our primary focus in the early stages has been on nutrient management.

The key elements that make up Prescription Farming involve:

Analysing the nutrient status of your soils, crops and pastures using the wide range of testing services provided by NATA-accredited laboratories. 
Making well informed and sound decisions about your nutrient and soil ameliorant requirements to meet your target yields and productivity levels, based on the recommendations provided.
Assessing productivity options with Tropigro's innovative Prescription Farming Decision Support System, which provides both simple agronomic modelling and database recording for your farm. This system is the most extensive in Australia and is used by Tropigro.
Using precisely the right mix of farm inputs to achieve productivity targets particularly nutrient combinations that are ideally suited to your farm's and paddock's individual requirements. Tropigro can provide individual blends to meet specific needs.

These elements provide the framework for you to apply Prescription Farming on your farm. They build on the established productivity recording systems that are used for monitoring crop, pasture, and/or animal performance. Put simply, Prescription Farming is a way of thinking and doing that provides you with the tools to achieve sustainable improvements in your farm productivity and profitability.

Doing it yourself

While sophisticated analysis and decision support techniques are at the heart of Prescription Farming, the principle that better information produces better decisions can be applied with much simpler tools. Tropigro have planning and recording materials to help you keep records of the tests and observations you make yourself which become a more valuable management aid over time.

Shared knowledge

Tropigro continues to develop the decision support systems behind Tropigro Prescription Farming in partnership with research and advisory groups to ensure that you have access to best practice farm management advice and information. New technologies such as GPS referencing, yield monitoring and mapping, and GIS analysis are now being developed and introduced as part of Tropigro Prescription Farming, and Tropigro  again is taking both a leadership and collaborative approach with various industry groups in this area.

Future directions

Beyond soil health and fertility management, Tropigro is also developing Prescription Farming to assist you in better managing animal nutrition, other inputs such as seed and chemicals, and the recording and economic analysis of farm inputs and outputs. These developments will be progressively introduced once they have been thoroughly tested and trailed with farmers.

Tropigro Prescription Farming Centres

The Tropigro Prescription Farming Centre is a focal point for farmers using Prescription Farming techniques. Once your nutrient needs have been determined, they are programmed into the system, which produces a prescription blend to meet your needs. The blending process is fully automated, making it more precise and flexible than other methods allow.

Tropigro and Prescription Farming on your farm

At the end of the day, you will decide how you want to implement the elements of Prescription Farming on your farm. For most farmers,the first step will be regular soil testing program across the farm to establish and monitor soil fertility. Many farmers now see this as an essential part of their farm planning, and have expanded testing to embrace the complete monitoring of their crops and pastures. Beyond this, the use of Tropigro's Prescription Farming Decision Support System to assess options and future directions is already proving an invaluable tool to many farmers seeking to improve farm productivity and ensure sustainability. Increasing numbers of farmers are using prescription fertiliser blends to match individual paddock needs for optimum economic outcomes, and sound environmental management. And there are already farmers using yield monitoring and mapping as part of Prescription Farming. It's your decision as to how soon and how much you will use the tools of Prescription Farming. Tropigro is ready to work with you to achieve the productivity and profitability outcomes for your farm.