FAQ

A non-cropland field boundary error occurs when the Fieldprint Platform detects previous land use not classified as cropland by the USDA Cropland Data Layer, which makes soil carbon modeling challenging. Non-cropland uses include the following:

• Almonds
• Apples
• Apricots
• Aquaculture
• Avocados
• Background
• Barren
• Barren
• Blueberries
• Caneberries
• Cherries
• Christmas Trees
• Citrus
• Clouds/No Data
• Developed
• Developed/High Intensity
• Developed/Low Intensity
• Developed/Med Intensity
• Developed/Open Space
• Grapes
• Herbaceous Wetlands
• Hops
• Nectarines
• Nonag/Undefined
• Olives
• Open Water
• Oranges
• Other Tree Crops
• Peaches
• Pears
• Pecans
• Perennial Ice/Snow
• Pistachios
• Plums
• Pomegranates
• Prunes
• Walnuts
• Water
• Wetlands
• Woody Wetlands

Please contact Field to Market staff to discuss alternatives.

Ideally, by interseeding before harvest (e.g. broadcasting cover crop seeds by flying over the crop), the cover crop establishes earlier and we expect more biomass over the growing season. Having earlier cover crop planting date would ideally increase carbon seq. and decrease soil erosion.

However, at this time the platform does not have the capability to do interseeding. It is a limitation with the WEPP and WEPS models as they cannot model two growing crops at once. The current solution for interseeding in the platform is to plant the cover crop the day of the harvest.

Baling and grazing are important activities to model for soil cover and carbon dynamics. When a grower bales or grazes a cash crop or residue from the cash crop, there is economic gain and that should be reflected in how GHG emissions are allocated and captured in the Platform.

For example, if a grower harvests corn grain, then bales the residue to use or sell as animal feed or biofuel feedstock, some emissions should be allocated to the baled corn residue, which will reduce the grain emissions, since the crop produced multiple products that had value. If a cover crop results in economic gain in the form of baled forage or live grazing, then that would convert the cover crop into a cash crop, even if the original intention was to grow the crop for cover.

Within a single alfalfa crop interval, different drying options can be used for each cutting, but with limitations. There are two questions to answer: Was the crop dried using energy? (If so) Where was the crop dried?

If one cutting was dried without energy, then another cutting can be dried, but only off-farm.

If one cutting was dried on-farm, then another cutting cannot be dried off-farm, and vice versa.