Frequently Asked Questions

The Fieldprint Platform does not have field size restrictions. However, we do want to note that the Energy Use and GHG Emission metrics might produce unexpected results when a field is under 1 hectare or 2.5 acres in size.

Yes, inputs can be filtered by indicator or seen all at once here.

The historical crop interval screener is designed to appear only once, when a new field is created. Once completed, it cannot be triggered again. The only way to re-access the screener is to delete the field and add a new record. If you leave the field unfinished, the screener will remain accessible until it is submitted.

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.

The platform is set up to handle these activities. The relay or double crop should be assigned its own crop interval. The crop can be spring killed via a termination operation in the chisel/plow category (look for “vegetation is killed” description when you hover over a tillage option with the mouse pointer).

Cover crops that are harvested for grain/forage should be treated as cash crops in the Platform as there is an economic gain. They can follow the same data entry process as double crops.

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. The current solution for interseeding in the platform is to plant the cover crop the day after harvest. We hope to add in the ability for interseeding at a future date.

We recommend leaving the pre-fill value for seeding rates. For grain systems, the upstream impact of seeding rates is low. Impact factors for seeding inputs were estimated on a kg basis for energy use and emissions.

The soil phosphorus concentration measured in a soil test can be interpreted as a qualitative level (Low, Medium, High/ Optimum, Very High/Excessive, etc). The interpretation comes from a state’s nutrient management recommendations which are based on factors like region, crop, and soil type. The level is often included on soil test reports.

If you have more than one soil sample collected for your field, please use the dominant soil phosphorus test level for the field in the drop-down selection. For example, if a grower has 100 acres and 60 acres of the field tested low for phosphorus, please select low for the drop-down.

The section pictured below impacts the Water Quality Indicator. You can read more about the indicator on our Metrics Documentation Website.

As of now, the platform requires the user to enter two separate application trips for this process. We are looking into a way to indicate the activities were done in one trip. For now, we have established an alternative that does not significantly contribute to an increase in the energy use score.

Complete the fertilizer activity information needed. Add a spraying operation activity on the same date as the fertilizer application activity. Set the fuel usage for the spraying operation activity to 0.

This alternative can also be used if there is a planting pass with starter fertilizer, a tillage pass with a fertilizer application, or a cover crop planting with a fertilizer application. In these cases, the fertilizer application fuel amount would be set to 0.

The manure rate and content are highly important data points to collect. You can learn more about the manure inputs on this documentation webpage.

We recommend using the aerial application. The diesel usage should be updated to an equivalent value for electricity or fuel consumption of the drone. The energy use of the drone is not 0 but it’s likely much lower than the fuel consumption of an agricultural plane. For specific fuel use recommendations, please reach out via our support email.

This distinction refers to the height of the crop remaining in the field after harvest, not the type of equipment used. For example, some growers harvest close to the ground, leaving less than 10 inches of standing stalks (low-standing stubble). Others leave taller standing stalks — sometimes over 30 inches — to provide wind protection or temporary wildlife habitat during the off-season.

You can add a tillage operation before a residue management activity to capture practices that occur prior to burning, such as rolling straw. The platform offers two activities specifically designed for rice: Roller residue stomper and Roller residue incorporator. These can be entered as a tillage operation in the sequence before the burning activity.

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.

Baling activities are not currently supported in Version 5. There are two related challenges that have not yet been resolved:

• Crop residue as a co-product, where an allocation factor (economic, mass, or other) would lower the GHG impacts attributed to the grain.
• Baling as a harvest operation that creates crop interval definition conflicts.

For grain commodities such as rice, the platform’s crop interval structure allows for one harvest operation, with the full impact allocated to the grain. The only commodity currently supported with multiple harvest activities within the same interval is alfalfa, as it is a perennial crop. Co-product support is currently only available for cotton, where an economic allocation factor is applied between cotton lint and cottonseed.

Enhanced support for co-products, multiple harvests, and allocation factors is planned for a future release.

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.

Not currently. If there are multiple irrigation water sources within a crop interval, the power source must be the same across all sources. For example, if a field was irrigated with groundwater and surface water, the power source for each must match (e.g. electricity and electricity, or diesel and diesel).

Similarly, if one source used power, the other cannot be left blank (indicating gravity-fed water).

Drying operations were reviewed and streamlined in Version 5 for greater transparency and usability. The following table shows the equivalent options between versions:

Note that if a crop is dried by a third party not associated with the grower, the platform defaults to “Commercially Dried,” which uses a dryer profile based on available industry information. This is treated as a post-harvest impact from an LCA perspective. If the farmer has full control of the dryer system, select “Where was the crop dried? On-Farm” to view available on-farm drying options. You can read more about the drying methods in the platform documentation.

Version 5 does not currently include an accounting method for on-farm solar or wind energy generation. This is a known limitation described in the metric revision documentation.

The Version 4 treatment of on-farm solar energy was considered inaccurate because it assigned 0 energy use and 0 GHG emissions to operations powered by on-farm solar, such as irrigation pumps or grain dryers. A complete and accurate method would need to include upstream impact factors associated with the manufacturing of solar panels and energy storage systems — similar to how the platform currently accounts for the upstream impacts of fertilizer manufacturing.

If on-farm solar energy generation is prevalent in your project, please contact Field to Market staff so we can begin planning to address this data gap.