When he started soil sampling fields in Walkerton, Ont., during high school, a career in agronomy wasn’t on the radar for Jonathan Zettler. But after working with agronomists and farm retail staff it didn’t take long for him take a shine to the idea of working with crops and calling the field his office.
Fast forward 25 years and things have worked out pretty well for Zettler who was awarded the 22nd annual Ontario Certified Crop Advisor CCA Award of Excellence at the organization’s annual meeting last week at London, Ont.
Those soil sampling summers led Zettler to the University of Guelph where he earned a degree in agricultural science and an opportunity to work with Cargill where he signed on as summer student before moving into operations management and then switching over to agronomy.
Along the way, he also explored his interest in financial management, becoming a chartered accountant. “I really wanted to understand the mechanics of how money flows in a business,” says Zettler. He also wanted to know how to right-size a farming operation, make better input buying decisions and how to run analysis on cash flow statements.
Today, Zettler operates Fieldwalker Agronomy, a business he started in 2018 for clients in primarily Bruce, Grey, Huron, Perth and Wellington counties. He was also the first Ontario provider of Soil, Water and Topography (SWAT) maps, initially offering the service to his clients in 2018.
In this interview with RealAgriculture’s Bernard Tobin, Zettler shares how SWAT maps are being used by his clients to create management zones to help manage field variability, and fine tune nutrient applications and seeding rates.
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