¶ What can I do on the field view tab?
The field view tab is where users can plan which crops they will plant in which years, one field at a time. It can also be used to create management templates, plan nutrient applications, calculate soil loss and configure crop rotations.
¶ Choosing a field
At the top of the page are three dropdown menus:
- Using the dropdown menu labeled “field," you can select the field where you'd like to plan your crops. You can also navigate through the fields on your farm using the left and right arrow buttons on the sides of the field's name.
- Using the dropdowns for group and subfarm, you can restrict the selection of fields in the dropdown menu to a particular group or subfarm of fields.
¶ Rotation settings
Below these dropdowns you will find a row of controls that will allow you to set up a crop rotation and view information about the projected soil loss on the chosen field:
Certain limitations apply to the possible lengths of a crop rotation:
- Crop rotations can be at most eight (8) crop years in length
- On 590 farms, a rotation must be at least three (3) years in length
- On CAFO farms, a rotation must be at least five (5) years in length
Once rotation settings on a field have been configured, click on calculate erosion to generate soil loss predictions and P index estimates for that field. If data for crops within the rotation is modified, all predicted erosion and P Index results for the field will be cleared automatically. SnapPlus may block a user from calculating soil less estimates on a field if there are issues with crop or application data contained in the rotation (more details in later section)
Field practices (contouring and filter areas) can be set up even if there are no crops on the field.
¶ Building and editing a crop sequence
¶ The active crop
This page makes several references to the “active crop" when using the management page. The active crop is the crop that is highlighted in blue in the row in the table. The crop becomes active when it is clicked on, and there can only be one active crop. With an active crop selected, features in the nutrient application planner become available. Some controls for adding crops to a sequence will be disabled if there is no active crop selected, or if the data entry in the active crop's row in the table is incomplete.
If there is data in SnapPlus on the crops planned on the selected field, no active crop will be selected automatically. The active crop is reassigned automatically when switching between fields.
¶ Editing and saving crop data
A new crop on a field will look like this:
In this example, DIO's field has no crop data saved on it. SnapPlus will automatically insert a first crop to the sequence to get started. In SnapPlus V3, crop data must be set in a specific order: first a season must be chosen, which will narrow the list of possible crops. Once a crop is selected, appropriate yield ranges and tillages can be chosen from the dropdown menus following.
When a season, crop, yield and tillage are all selected, SnapPlus will save crop data automatically. This will generate a set of UW recommendations for nutrient application.
¶ Adding crops to a sequence
Below the rotation settings and field selection dropdown, there are a few buttons available corresponding to controls that can be used to create crop sequence data on fields:
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+ New crop
This button will also insert a row below the active crop,. This button is only available if there is an active crop selected. Some data will be automatically assigned on clicking this button:
- Calendar year: the year after the active crop's calendar year, unless the active crop is perennial seeding and fall planted, in which case the year will default to two years after the active crop's calendar year.
- Other crops: If the active crop is not the last crop in the sequence, the crops following the active crop will have some data changed automatically by SnapPlus. Every row that is below the newly inserted crop row will have 1 year added to its calendar year property, as in the example below:
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¶ Additional + new crop features
Selecting the button dropdown next to new crop will display access to some more buttons that can be used to add crop data to a plan:
- + add crop same year will insert a row below the active crop, with some values automatically set:
- Calendar year: this value will either be the same or one greater than the value in the calendar year column of the crop in the row above. The year will be the same as the crop in the row above if the crop in the row above is planted in the April-May, June, Mid-Summer or Established season. The year will be the calendar year after the crop in the row above if the crop in the row above is planted in Late Summer-Fall.
- Plant season: this value will be the first planting season following the the planting season of the crop in the row above, and before the planting season of the crop in the row below (if there is any).
- + add crop at beginning of sequence will automatically create a crop in the calendar year before the current first calendar year in your crop sequence. For example, if the first row in the table has calendar year 2025, adding a crop to the beginning of the sequence will put a row on the top of the table in calendar year 2024
- + add crop at end of sequence will automatically create a crop in the calendar year after the current last calendar year in your crop sequence. For example, if the bottom row in the table has calendar year 2028, adding a crop to the beginning of the sequence will put a row on the bottom of the table in calendar year 2029
¶ Duplicate crop
- The duplicate crop button is available if there is an active crop. Use the duplicate to select a position in the sequence and then insert a copy of the current active crop (highlighted row) to that position in the sequence, following the same rules above. Applications will also be copied.
- Note: if duplicating a fall-planted seeding crop to the end of the crop sequence, the crop's year will be assigned differently depending on the current final crop in the sequence:
- If the last crop in the sequence is fall-planted, the duplicated crop will take the calendar year after that crop.
- Otherwise, the duplicated crop will take the same calendar year as the last crop in the sequence, but start the next crop year.
¶ Management templates
Templates can be used in the field view. More information is available on the template builder page.
¶ Undo
Changes to crop data may be undone one modification at a time using the undo button. There are some rules:
- Editing and deleting crop data may be undone.
- Inserting a new crop will not be undone – the correct way to do this is to delete the crop using the delete button
- If, over the course of undoing changes to crop data, the undone state is complete and valid (i.e. there are no red messages in any of the cells), crop data will be saved in that state. If there are more changes to undo, they can still be undone.
- If undoing complete and valid crop data makes the data incomplete or invalid, the undo will not save changes.
- When switching between fields on the field view tab, the history of changes that can be undone is reset.
¶ Deleting a crop from the sequence
Crop data on a field may be removed from a plan by clicking on the trash can icon in the rightmost column of the table. If necessary, SnapPlus will automatically adjust the value for the ‘year’ property of a crop that is deleted if that crop is planned between two crop in consecutive years. In the below example, a crop is deleted in the middle of a sequence of three crops:
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¶ Error messages when planning crop sequence
SnapPlus will look for issues with the sequences of crops in your plan to make sure that the data in your plan can appropriately be used to calculate soil loss estimates.
¶ Invalid or incomplete crop data
SnapPlus will restrict the combinations of crop data that can be saved – only some crops can be planted in some seasons, only some tillages can be applied to some crops, and so on. If the chosen combination is not accounted for in SnapPlus' database of crop, season and tillage data, a red message will display indicating that the data must be changed. See the following examples:
Example: crop is internally invalid
Example: crop is invalid because of its position in the sequence
Notice that when there is an issue with crop data, a blue icon will display. This icon will correspond to an icon in the NAP where the error message will also be available.
¶ Rotation settings and invalid crop data
If there are problems with crop data, and that crop is part of a rotation, soil loss estimates can't be generated for that field and the ‘calculate’ button will be grayed out. Relevant error messages:
- "This crop's fall tillage overlaps with the previous crop's planting."
- Possible solutions: change the tillage on the offending crop. Remove or modify the preceding crop so that there is no fall-planted crop before the crop that is fall-tilled.
- “This crop requires a seeding crop.”
- Possible solutions: change the established crop to a non-Established crop, change the preceding crop to a seeding crop, insert a seeding crop after the preceding crop/before the established crop. This error will likely display on plans converted from SnapPlus 2, because in V3, established crops must be seeded. In that case, it may make sense to change the established crop into a seeding crop.
- “This crop is planted at the same time as the previous crop.”
- Possible solutions: delete one of the two crops that are planted at the same time. This error may show up in converted V2 plans.
SnapPlus considers a rotation a repeated continuation of a set of crops on a field. So, when checking if soil loss estimates can be calculated on a rotation of crops, SnapPlus will compare the last crop in the rotation to the first crop in the rotation. If the first crop in the rotation cannot be planted after the last crop according to the rules outlined above, the rotation is considered invalid. For example:
- If the rotation begins on an established crop but the last crop is not established (and seeded) or a seeding crop, the rotation is invalid.
- If the last crop in the rotation is fall planted and the first crop is fall tilled, the rotation is invalid.
So if erosion cannot be calculated, or if some start year and length can't be selected as rotation settings, one of those two situations may apply.
¶ Two week operation date overlap
Sometimes the data in a nutrient management plan needs some extra pre-processing to serve as input for soil loss modeling (and so, to calculate soil loss). One common situation is that crop data is set up in a plan where the dates of operations (planting, cutting, tilling etc.) don't exactly match the dates that are assumed by soil loss models. In this case, SnapPlus will display a message when the data is saved:
This is not an error or a warning. It is important information that may explain why SnapPlus soil loss prediction is more or less than roughly expected. Continue or Cancel will both exit the popup.