Supplementary Material

Commonly requested data, tables, and additional information to the methods documentation.

Crops included in the Fieldprint Platform

Table 1: Crops included in the Fieldprint Platform, showing US crop production units. The crop production unit in SI units (metric system) is 1 kilogram (kg).
Crop Crop Production Unit (USCS) lb / USCS unit Production Output
Alfalfa ton 2000 Forage or Biomass
Barley bushel 48 Grain or seed
Chickpeas (garbanzos) lb 1 Grain or seed
Corn (grain) bushel 56 Grain or seed
Corn (silage) ton 2000 Forage or Biomass
Cotton lb 1 Lint
Dry Beans lb 60 Grain or seed
Dry Peas lb 60 Grain or seed
Fava Beans lb 1 Grain or seed
Lentils lb 1 Grain or seed
Lupin lb 1 Grain or seed
Peanuts lb 1 Grain or seed
Potatoes cwt 100 Tuber
Rice cwt 100 Grain or seed
Sorghum bushel 56 Grain or seed
Soybeans bushel 60 Grain or seed
Sugar beets ton sugar 2000 Root
Wheat (durum) bushel 60 Grain or seed
Wheat (spring) bushel 60 Grain or seed
Wheat (winter) bushel 60 Grain or seed

Fieldprint Calculator User Inputs

Foreground activity data

The Fieldprint Platform expects primary data at the field level from farmers for their activities to produce a crop. This includes the following:

  • Field boundaries for the planted area.
  • Sequence of crops planted, including cover cropping, double cropping, fallow years, and crop failures. When growers draw a field boundary in the FP, the system pre-fills the sequence of cash crops detected by the USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL) (Boryan et al. 2011) from 2008 to the latest available year; however, growers are encouraged to review and correct the pre-filled information. The Cropland Data Layer currently provides detection of cash crops, fallow years, and most double crops; it does not provide detection of cover cropping, crop failures, and triple or quadruple cropping. Depending on the timing of data entry, growers will need to indicate the latest crop produced as the CDL annual release occurs several months after the harvest season closes for summer cash crops.
  • Crop production output (e.g. yield) for each field, on the basis of planted area.
    • In the future, users will be able to indicate if there was a crop failure.
  • Fertilizer types and rates.
  • Manure types and rates.
  • Irrigation activities, which include the gross amount of irrigation water pumped, pumping depth and pressure, and the source of energy for the pump.
  • Addition of other organic amendments (e.g., compost, bio-solids).
  • Number of pesticide products applied. Field to Market produces assumptions of pesticide rates by category (e.g. herbicide, insecticide) for each crop. See the Supplementary Material for more information on pesticide rates.
  • All field activities: plant, harvest, tillage, residue management, nutrient and pesticide applications, and cover cropping. Field to Market provides a comprehensive list of field operations to closely match the agricultural equipment used by growers based on the Conservation Resources Land Management Operations Database (CRLMOD) (Kucera and Coreil 2023).
  • Transportation distance of crop production outputs from the field to the next step (drying or storage by grower or purchaser).
  • Amount of moisture removed by drying activities, and characteristics of the drying system.
  • Seeding rate. This input has minimal impact on the outcome of the analysis, and Field to Market pre-fills the seeding rate based on available literature data. Growers can review and change it.

References

Boryan, Claire, Zhengwei Yang, Rick Mueller, and Mike Craig. 2011. “Monitoring US Agriculture: The US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Cropland Data Layer Program.” Geocarto International 26 (5): 341358.
Kucera, Michael J., and Christopher B. Coreil. 2023. “Overview of USDA-NRCS Erosion Prediction Technology and Conservation Resources - Land Management Operations Database and Use.” Soil Erosion Research Under a Changing Climate, January 8-13, 2023, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, USA. https://doi.org/10.13031/soil.23007.