Data Services at $1/acre, PSNT soil nitrogen $60/sample, plant tissue $60/sample, manure testing $90/sample. Management zones, grids and variable rate prescriptions.
Data Services are $1 per acre, which covers creating management zones or sample grids for your fields and uploading them to John Deere Operations Center, plus uploading your soil test results and prescriptions. Testing is priced per sample: in-season soil nitrogen testing (PSNT) at $60 per sample, plant tissue testing under the PT2 package at $60 per sample, and manure testing under the M5 package at $90 per sample. Customers pull their own samples and pay lab fees.
Variable rate application only works if something tells the machine where to change. That something is a map, and the map has to come from real information about the field. Agronomy Service Packages are how we build that layer for you and get it into John Deere Operations Center where your equipment can use it.
There are two halves. The data half is where we create management zones or sample grids for your fields and upload them, then take your soil results and prescriptions and load those in as well. The testing half is in-season lab work: soil nitrogen, plant tissue and manure, priced per sample.
Pricing is straightforward. Data Services are $1 per acre. In-season soil nitrogen testing (PSNT) is $60 per sample. Plant tissue testing, the PT2 package, is $60 per sample. Manure testing, the M5 package, is $90 per sample.
For $1 per acre, TRULAND creates management zones or sample grids for your fields and uploads them to John Deere Operations Center. When your soil test results come back and prescriptions are built, we upload those to Operations Center too, so they are sitting where your machines can pull them.
What you are buying is the layer between a lab report and a working file on a display. That step trips up a lot of operations. Results come back as a PDF, the prescription lives in someone else's software, and it never quite makes it to the machine in a form the machine will accept. Getting it into Operations Center correctly, attached to the right field with the right boundary, is what makes it usable.
A sample grid divides the field into equal cells, commonly two and a half acres, and you pull a sample from each. It is systematic and it makes no assumptions. It is a good fit when you do not have much history on a field, when the variability is not obviously tied to anything you can see, or when a landlord or program wants a defensible, evenly spaced record. The tradeoff is sample count, which means cost, and the fact that a grid cell can straddle two genuinely different soils and average them into a number that describes neither.
Management zones divide the field by what is actually different about it. Soil type, topography, historic yield, imagery, drainage, old field lines. You pull one composite sample per zone. The tradeoff runs the other way: fewer samples, better matched to real variability, but it depends entirely on drawing the zones correctly. Bad zones produce confident wrong answers.
In practice, grids suit new-to-you ground and fields with no reliable history. Zones suit fields you have farmed for years, especially where you can see the pattern from the road or in the yield map. Plenty of operations run both, gridding new ground and moving it to zones once a few years of data exist. We will look at your fields and tell you which makes sense where.
The point of soil testing is that fields are not uniform, and a flat rate is a compromise applied everywhere. On the parts of the field that needed less, you spent money you did not need to spend. On the parts that needed more, you left yield out there. A variable rate prescription splits the difference the right way: more where it pays, less where it does not.
That works best for the things that vary in a stable, mappable way. Phosphorus and potassium levels, pH and lime requirement, organic matter and cation exchange capacity all fit that description. They change slowly and they map well, so a prescription built on them stays useful across a full cycle.
Seeding rate is the other common one. Where populations should differ by soil productivity or water-holding capacity, a variable rate seeding prescription usually pays for itself faster than a fertility program does, because seed is expensive and the response is visible in a single season.
Nitrogen behaves differently. It moves, it leaches, it mineralizes with the weather. A soil test from last fall tells you very little about what is available to the crop in June, which is exactly why in-season nitrogen testing exists as a separate service.
The pre-sidedress nitrate test, PSNT, is a snapshot of nitrate in the soil taken during the season rather than before it. It is priced at $60 per sample.
Timing is the whole test. It is pulled when corn is roughly six to twelve inches tall, before sidedress, deep enough to capture the profile the crop is drawing from. Pull too early and mineralization has not happened yet. Pull too late and the crop has already taken it and you have missed the window to do anything with the answer.
It earns its keep on fields where the nitrogen picture is genuinely uncertain: manured ground, fields after a legume, ground with high organic matter, or a spring wet enough that you do not know what is left. On those fields the test can either tell you to skip or reduce a pass you were planning, or tell you that you are shorter than you thought and there is still time to fix it. On a field with a known history and a normal spring, the test usually confirms what you expected.
Tissue testing looks at what the crop actually took up, which is not the same question as what is in the soil. A nutrient can be present and still unavailable because of pH, moisture, root damage, compaction or antagonism with another nutrient. Tissue testing is priced at $60 per sample under the PT2 package.
Two ways to use it. Diagnostically, when there is a problem you can see and you want to know what is behind it. Pull from the affected area and pull a matching sample from a good area of the same field, at the same growth stage, and compare. A single sample without a comparison is much harder to interpret.
Or on a schedule, sampling the same fields at the same growth stages every year to build a baseline of what your crop normally looks like. That is how you catch a slow decline in a micronutrient before it costs you a yield hit. Sample the correct plant part for the growth stage, avoid sampling right after a foliar application, and stay consistent about timing year over year or the numbers are not comparable.
If you apply manure and you have not tested it, you are guessing at rate. Manure is not a consistent product. Nutrient content varies by species, ration, bedding, storage, dilution and how well the pit was agitated before loading. Book values are a starting point, not a number to apply on. Manure testing is $90 per sample under the M5 package.
Testing turns manure into a known input. It tells you how much nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium you are actually putting down per unit applied, which lets you credit it properly against your commercial fertilizer plan instead of applying twice. On operations with a lot of manure, that credit is often the single largest fertility savings available.
It also matters on the compliance side. Where you are managing to a phosphorus limit or keeping records for a nutrient management plan, an actual analysis is the record. Sample when the pit is agitated so what you sample resembles what you spread, take multiple sub-samples through the load and combine them, keep the sample cool and get it to the lab promptly.
Be clear on the split, because it keeps the price where it is. TRULAND creates the management zones or sample grids and uploads them to Operations Center, and uploads soil test results and prescriptions to Operations Center. The customer pulls the samples and pays the lab fees.
That means the sampling itself is on you, following the grid or zone plan we provide, along with the labeling and the handling. It also means the lab invoice is separate from what you pay us. The per-sample prices listed here for PSNT, plant tissue and manure testing are the TRULAND package prices for those services.
You also need to give us accurate field information to work from, particularly boundaries. Zones and grids are only as good as the boundary they are built inside. If your boundaries are rough, start there. Our boundary mapping service exists for exactly that reason.
Tell us which fields, how many acres, and what you are trying to answer. If the goal is a fertility program, we will talk grids versus zones and get a sampling plan built. If the goal is a nitrogen decision this season, we will talk PSNT timing. If you apply manure, testing it is usually the first thing to fix.
Call the Precision Ag Support Center at (260) 296-2391 or contact your nearest TRULAND store.
External sources are provided for reference. For anything specific to your machine or your operation, call the store nearest you.
Data Services are $1 per acre, which covers creating management zones or sample grids for your fields and uploading them to John Deere Operations Center, plus uploading your soil test results and prescriptions. Testing is priced per sample: in-season soil nitrogen testing (PSNT) at $60 per sample, plant tissue testing under the PT2 package at $60 per sample, and manure testing under the M5 package at $90 per sample. Customers pull their own samples and pay lab fees.
Grids divide the field into equal cells and make no assumptions, which suits ground you have little history on or situations where an evenly spaced, defensible record matters. Zones divide the field by what is actually different about it, using soil type, topography, yield history and imagery, which means fewer samples better matched to real variability. Zones depend on being drawn well. Many operations grid new ground and move to zones once they have a few years of data.
During the season, before sidedress, typically when corn is around six to twelve inches tall. Earlier than that and mineralization has not caught up, so the reading understates what will be available. Later and the crop has already taken up the nitrogen and there is no time left to act on the result. PSNT is most useful on manured ground, fields following a legume, high organic matter soils, and after a wet spring when you genuinely do not know what is left.
A soil test says what is in the ground. A tissue test says what the crop actually took up, which can be very different if pH, moisture, compaction, root damage or nutrient antagonism is limiting uptake. Tissue testing is most useful when you sample a problem area alongside a good area of the same field at the same growth stage, so you have a comparison. It is priced at $60 per sample under the PT2 package.
Because manure varies more than most people expect. Species, ration, bedding, storage, dilution and how well the pit was agitated all change the analysis, so book values are a starting point rather than a rate. Testing at $90 per sample lets you credit manure accurately against your commercial fertilizer plan instead of paying twice for the same nutrients, and it gives you an actual record where you are managing to a phosphorus limit or keeping a nutrient management plan.
No. TRULAND creates the management zones or sample grids and uploads them to John Deere Operations Center, and uploads your soil test results and prescriptions once they exist. The customer pulls the samples and pays the lab fees. We will provide the sampling plan so you know where to pull from, and we handle getting the results back into Operations Center in a form your equipment can use for variable rate application.
Yes. Zones and grids are built inside a field boundary, so a rough or open boundary produces a rough map, and the errors show up at the edges where a lot of waste already happens. If your boundaries were drawn quickly, drawn from imagery, or reflect fence lines that no longer exist, fix them first. TRULAND offers boundary mapping using a supplied 835M Gator with precision ag equipment, uploaded directly to Operations Center.
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