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Holly Agricultural Resources Center

Our staffs visibility and credibility is enhanced. More effective resource use and improved communication are quantifiable benefits. Over the Extranet, our GIS databases contain accurate, updated, and intuitively accessed information.

Business Problem

Holly Sugar Corporation contracts with farmers to provide a controlled amount of sugar beets to each factory. Higher quality sugar beets help our factories to run more efficiently and our growers are paid more for the crop. Tabular database systems in the past have shown us opportunities for producing a higher quality crop, but our growers and agricultural staffs had quite a bit of difficulty accessing the data. Using GIS, we spatially tied our tabular sugar beet field data with that fields location and made it available over a secure Extranet site. This helps our growers and staffs visualize relationships. It is also improving the quality of the data we receive because many growers take time to put in accurate information for their own crop records. We have tied this information to environmental data including soil type, precipitation and heat unit data. This is helping us build robust crop models to assist with disease, pest and yield monitoring. The agronomic advice we provide to our growers is improved and our growers are using the data to better time pesticide applications and irrigations.

Technology Implemented

With NT servers, our team is using ArcView 3.2 and 8.1, ArcIMS 3.0, ArcSDE 8, Spatial Analyst, and Image Analyst software. ArcExplorer software is widely used by our staffs and growers. We have also installed mobile GIS software on Compaq IPAQ handheld units for mobile GPS and GIS capability. Our staffs utilize the Trimble AGS132 differential correction GPS for field boundary data collection.

Development Team

AgTrac TM

Development Team Biography

Alan Telck- Manager of the Holly Agricultural Resources Center
As manager of HARC, Alan manages the agricultural computer and chemistry laboratories and is responsible for technology development and transfer to Imperial Sugar Companys agricultural staffs and growers.
Peter Hickman- GIS Coordinator
Petes aptitude in GIS has directly benefited HARCs AgTrac project through with his work in remote imagery, mobile GIS applications and serving maps over the Internet.

Brenda Jacobs- Webmaster
Brenda has been directly responsible for building the intuitive interface for the IMS application. Her Javascript programming capabilities have helped us build a customized Internet mapping application.