Step-by-step enrollment:

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  1. Create an account

  2. Upload boundary files or data spec

  3. Run Smart Defaults - Historic Rotations

  4. Run Smart Defaults - Future Rotations

  5. Correct verifiable years with farm records

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3. Historic records - Smart Defaults

The first step to complete your Nori Project is to populate your spreadsheet with historic data, dating back to the year 2000. While farm records are ideal for running the most accurate model of what took place on your specific farm, we realize that many growers do not store information back to 2000. To save the grower the time and effort, Nori developed the Smart Defaults tool to help populate the historical records for a Supplier. The Smart Defaults tool simplifies the historic data entry through importing data from regional norms from NASS Crop Data Layer to your Nori Project. 

When working through Smart Defaults, answer questions with a rule-of-thumb approach. Think through agronomic practices that are generally associated with your crop rotations. Do you typically plant soybeans in mid May? Perhaps aim to apply 150 lbs N / ac to corn? Nori does not require the nuances of dates and rates within these historic years, and therefore we advise that you do not spend a lot of time tracking down these specifics. Use these generalities to guide the Smart Defaults process. You can always change specific values within the spreadsheet.

How to use Smart Defaults

  1. How to access it-  Select “Set Up Smart Defaults” from the home page of your project. Note: for best performance, Nori recommends using the Chrome web browser.

  1. Select “Set up Historical Practices” to begin the survey to fill in the historic data for all fields associated with your project

  1. Once in the tool, start by clicking the “Crop Rotations” tab. This step is necessary to begin with as it builds the structure for the remaining Smart Defaults tasks. The crop rotations will populate based on mapping satellite imagery from your field boundaries to NASS Crop Data Layer. If the crop rotations data does not date back to 2000 for a certain region, we assume the most historic crop rotation and repeat it back to 2000.

    1. If the management differed from field to field, it is possible to select a subset of your fields on this page to apply a certain template of agronomic practices to these fields. If you choose to do this, you can then run a new Smart Defaults to apply a different set of agronomic practices to the remaining subset of fields. 

  2. Populate remaining tasks. Use the Explanation of Smart Defaults section below for guidance on each section, but the general cadence for each section is 

    1. Select appropriate tasks for based on a rule of thumb of; 

    2. Tailor the details of the task to the best “rule of thumb” dates, rates, and yields per given crop species; 

    3. Select [Import] at the bottom of the page. This final step will import the data from Smart Defaults directly into your spreadsheet. If you do not want it entered in your spreadsheet press “Cancel” and you can come back to this step at a later time.

  3. Once you are done with the Smart Defaults tool (either you have completed all the tasks or only completed a subset of tasks), select “Open Records” at the bottom of the Smart Defaults homepage.  If you opted to run Smart Defaults to only a subset of fields, you can select “Set up New Smart Defaults” to set up your second (or third!) template of agronomic practices to the fields not applied in the first round. Note that the only way to add crops once you have run through Smart Defaults once on a field is to do so manually.


  1. Check your spreadsheet for accuracy of imported data. The Smart Defaults will apply to any year where there is no previously entered data and will not override the manually or data spec entered data. 

Explanation of Smart Defaults section

Crop Rotations

After you select “Crop rotations,” the page will take a moment to load. At this point, Smart Defaults is connecting to the NASS Crop Data Layer database to identify historic rotations based on satellite imagery defined by your field boundaries. 

Scroll left to right to look at all the years CDL has identified crop rotations. If the populated crops do not reflect your specific operations, you can override any of the crops in rotation using the drop-down menu. This usually only happens in earlier years (~2000 - 2008).

To change several years at once, click "Customize crop rotations" and follow the on-screen prompts to create customized crop rotations for your fields.

Check the box to the right of the fields you want to import

Select “Import Crop Rotations” to import the data to your Nori spreadsheet and return to the Smart Defaults homepage.

Planting and Harvest

To import data associated with planting and harvest , select the box to the left of each crop species. This will populate the general planting / harvest dates for these crops based on your region. 

This section is based on general practices, therefore you do not need to focus on specific dates or yields on a year by year basis. For example, if you generally harvest corn in early May and harvest in early fall, select May 1 for planting and October 1 for harvest.

If your crop has multiple harvests throughout the year, such as alfalfa, select “Add event” to add in additional harvest dates and yields for this crop type. 

Tillage and Termination Events

This section applies to all types of soil disturbance and crop termination based on the crop type. Therefore, only select broad spectrum herbicide when used to terminate a crop, such as a cover crop. Only select “No till planting” when it was the only soil disturbance applied to a crop. 

This section also includes ability to apply more than one tillage or termination event to a crop species and can account for primary, secondary or multiple tillage passes. 

Again, assign a generic date to the tillage date. If “No till planting” is selected, use the same date as the crop planting date from the previous page.

Irrigation

This section must be filled out prior to the fertilizer section as it is used in predicting fertilizer types. Therefore, if none of your fields were irrigated, select “I Don’t Use Irrigation”.

Select general dates and rates for each crop species type listed. If some of your fields have irrigation while others do not, regardless of crop rotation, you may run smart defaults twice on the two types of field (irrigated vs not irrigated).

Fertilizer and Synthetic Nitrogen

This section only includes synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. As with previous Smart Default tasks, you can select multiple fertilizer events per crop type.  Using the rule of thumb approach, select the crop(s) that were fertilized and populate the data associated with your general fertilizer application. 


Manure and Organic Matter Additions

This section covers all organic matter (manure, soybean meal, etc) fertilizers applied to your field. If you did not use manure, you can skip this step. Populate the data associated with your general approach to manure and organic matter additions on a crop by crop basis. 


Known limitations / unsupported features

Support for perennials

There are known issues with how Smart Defaults handles perennials that will limit their effectiveness for Growers that have perennials in crop profile. We will work to address these issues in future updates but may not support your specific management scenario in the current version.

Harvest date issues with cover crops

Though cover crops often do not have a harvest date (see “Tillage and Termination Events” above), if you leave the harvest date blank on Smart Defaults there is a default date that still populates within the spreadsheet that will flag errors. The solution is to enter a harvest date to represent the end of the crop’s growing season (i.e. if you applied the broad spectrum herbicide on 4/1/19, enter 4/1/19 for the harvest date in Smart Defaults). You could also choose to manually remove the default harvest dates within the spreadsheet, but this is a manual effort that must be done year-by-year, field-by-field.