Tag: Ag technology

Using Data for Hybrid and Variety Seed Selection

“Part of the value of what they get in the Premier Crop program is being able to see beyond their own operations. A lot of times, hybrid and variety is the very first thing they look for.”

– Dan Frieberg

DAN FRIEBERG: I always think, from a grower’s perspective, that the first analysis that you do is your own. It’s what your own results were from that crop year. What worked and what didn’t? It’s understanding analytics by hybrid or variety across their operation. The reason that it’s really great at a grower level is that, sometimes, a hybrid or variety in data shows up having done really poorly at a grower level, but the grower knows where it was planted. They have the benefit of knowing that the reason that number did badly, or looks bad, was because I planted it on my three worst fields. It may have been that they picked the number intentionally that had more defensive characteristics because those are really difficult fields. So, I think just looking at how your numbers did on your own operation is maybe a starting place.

TONY LICHT: Maybe to build off of that, Dan, from there, once I do the analysis on my own operation, then I want to think about: “How did it do for others around me in a like environment, somewhere pretty close to me?” Because if it happened to do poorly for me, but I find out it did well for others, where did it do well for others? How can I correct that?

use data to select seed hybrid

DAN FRIEBERG: Amen. Every grower in the system has the option of whether they want to be part of seeing anonymously beyond their own operation. Today, they all want that. Part of the value of what they get in the program is being able to see beyond their own operations. A lot of times, hybrid and variety is the very first thing they look for. They want to see beyond what their own experience was.

TONY LICHT: And depending on the number of hybrids or varieties they’re planting, sometimes if it’s planted on a small amount of acres, they completely forget about it. I mean, you think about the larger-acre hybrids, and it’s like: “Oh, I forgot about those new ones I planted. How did they shake up against the rest of my line?”

RENEE HANSEN: I mean, you’re talking about expanding beyond the operation, in a sense benchmarking against other areas or like areas. Can you explain or elaborate a little bit more about how Premier Crop utilizes the hybrid and variety selection with data? What does that potentially look like? Or what is the conversation with the grower?

DAN FRIEBERG: Renee, it’s kind of unlimited sorts. Initially, a lot of people might focus on soil types. If they have dominant soil types, it might be just hybrid and variety performance on different soil types. In some markets, for example, pH can be a huge driver on soybeans. High-pH areas or low-pH areas can have a huge swing, and varieties respond differently in those environments. Those would be two examples of how people get started, but they probably don’t stop there. They look at things like planting date or harvest date. So, if you’re a large operation, what inevitably happens is you end up with some fields that you know are going to be harvested last. So, for those numbers, Renee, they might drill down on late-harvest data. They’re trying to pick numbers that they know will stand and hold the ear late into harvest because some field has got to be harvested last, and a lot of growers literally plan. They plan their harvest by the way they plan their planting. There are certain fields that are always going to get planted first. In the case of harvest, there are certain fields that are going to be taken out first. It might be the ones that are closest to the bin site. They want to get the bins. They want to get the dryer going, and so there are certain fields that will come out early. A lot of times, those fields that come out early will probably get more of a racehorse number that doesn’t have to stand. It’s the highest yield potential because they know they’re going to get it before they get very far into harvest.

profitability by hybrid or variety

TONY LICHT: As-applied fertility can also be another environment they may want to look at, as well. How did I treat this group of corn hybrids differently on as-applied nitrogen, maybe split treatment or in-season treatment, versus just “all in the fall” kind of a concept? Are there differences amongst the hybrids and varieties now? How did they react to the environment they were in, whether it be as-applied fertility or soil test fertility?

DAN FRIEBERG: What we do is just adding another source of analysis to what a grower considers. A lot of times, their decision is if something did exceptional for them, they’re probably going to plant it again, obviously. They’ll look beyond their own operation to see and make sure it wasn’t a fluke or see how it held up in other environments. One of the advantages we have is that we can tend to see the hybrid and variety performance in different growing environments in the same year, meaning that you might’ve been in a really dry area, but you can go look and see how it did in a normal area. Or you happen to be unfortunate and you got hit by the wind, and so, sometimes, you want to jump out of your area because your own data isn’t as meaningful, just because you had something that happened that didn’t make your data quite as useful.

TONY LICHT: I was just going to say that’s a great point. Case in point: the wide area this year that got hit by the derecho. Those folks don’t lose data for a year. They still have the ability to build on data, albeit from a little bit further than their real local geography. It might be from 20 miles away in an area that was not hit. It could still be considered a like-agronomic environment.

DAN FRIEBERG: There are really big dollar swings because we’re measuring the economics and the agronomics. The reason people focus on it a lot is, at the end of the year, there are just really big dollar swings on a per-acre basis. It could easily be a 100 dollar-per-acre swing in return to land and management or what we call yield efficiency. You can just see really large swings. When you start analyzing that way, from my perspective, it probably leads to having a strategy where you call more aggressively. I grew up on a livestock farm and the term “cull,” “culling the herd.” In the livestock industry, you’re just constantly eliminating the low producers. When you’re making genetic selection, you’re eliminating the bottom 20 percent or whatever. In the case of hybrid and variety selection, I think, sometimes, we need to be more aggressive about calling some of the poor performers out if we’re really focused on trying to drive the highest returns.

Yield Efficiency Score

RENEE HANSEN: You both were talking about data. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the data features that Premier Crop measures hybrid variety with?

TONY LICHT: Everybody always thinks of just yield by hybrid and variety, but there are a lot of other attributes that come along with that hybrid: relative maturity on the chemical resistance or the seed disease resistance, as far as rootworm traits, non-rootworm traits. All those things come along with it. So, the conversation goes beyond not just a yield by hybrid, but maybe there was a specific trait that really helped drive yield, or a certain plant date helped drive yield. What are the trends I can see across my farm from a given year, and then also across a series of years, as well?

DAN FRIEBERG: Over the years, you’ve lived through some of the trait issues, just where we had areas where the rootworm trait wasn’t holding up. We ended up going through several years where needing a rootworm insecticide was a big part of the strategy and a big return for growers.

TONY LICHT: Absolutely. As a grower, do I need to do a double approach here? Not just the trait, but seed-applied insecticide, and where? And what can I expect from those people that have been utilizing that? What has the success rate been for them, to determine immediately, like: “Okay, well, here’s kind of a return on investment I can expect to get back out of this.”

DAN FRIEBERG: The trait thing probably also comes up as people shift in herbicide strategies. Renee, people would use the data to try to quantify differences in herbicide if they’re considering Liberty or if they’re needing to rotate strategies from any kind of a pest management or weed management strategy. That’s another piece where they drill down in data a lot, just to try to find the best performing genetics, as they’re switching strategies.

RENEE HANSEN: So, what would you say is the benefit to having all of this data to a grower who is utilizing Premier Crop Systems versus somebody who isn’t?

DAN FRIEBERG: It’s even the growers we work with, Renee. We are one part of how they make decisions in the seed world because, a lot of times, they have seed sellers who they really trust. They have long-time relationships in local communities with seed advisors. So, a lot of times, the seed advisor is there, too, and most growers will want to plant 20 percent of their acreage to something that’s new because every year there are new genetics coming out. Unless it’s been planted commercially, we don’t have any data on the new numbers. A lot of times, that’s what happens. Their local seed advisor or seed seller is positioning what they know about the new genetics from plots and what they’ve seen in small quantities as it got planted in the pre-commercial years.

TONY LICHT: A team can definitely help that grower out. We’ve always said that agronomy is local. So, that local knowledge with that seed advisor, combined with a lot of data points from a given area, can just help amplify the value proposition for the grower in getting the right seed on the right acres.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, and since we have a lot of data in our system, we clearly have seen. Over the years, with all of the data in our system, have you seen trends? And what are they?

TONY LICHT: There have definitely been trends in certain geographies of a stronger yield correlation by later maturing hybrid. But within that, there are all these “gotchas,” where there are a few early-season hybrids that perform within those environments very, very well — whether it be later maturing hybrids going further north or earlier maturing hybrids going south. So, definitely looking at not just a multi-year, but looking within and across those different years individually, trying to pull out those trends of what hybrids can be moved around either north to south to accommodate diversifying a grower’s portfolio.

DAN FRIEBERG: In the early years, you could literally see in the data. Sometimes, when companies had trouble with trait insertion, the non-traited versus the traited, you could actually see a yield decrease. I mean, companies are getting way better at that. I don’t think it’s as big an issue as it might’ve been in the early years.

TONY LICHT: When new traits come to the market, growers will definitely want to ask the question: “How do the new traits compare to my existing operation? Or how much more do they bring to the table for me?”

DAN FRIEBERG: Growers drill down on that really quick because what tends to happen is new traits come at a price. Usually, the company is wanting a premium for them. They’re trying to weigh that. Is that extra seed investment worth it? Am I actually getting a higher return?

RENEE HANSEN: Can you talk a little bit about yield efficiency — and Dan, you did elaborate on it a little bit — and how developing and making a selection for your hybrid or variety, how that can attribute to your yield efficiency score?

DAN FRIEBERG: Yield efficiency is just the dollar-per-acre return to land and management, meaning, after you’ve paid for the seed and nutrients and crop protection and field operations, what’s left. From a seed perspective, Renee, it comes down to: “What was the price point? How much did I have to pay for the seed?” And then, probably, the next piece is: “How could I manage the seed?” There are some numbers that just have a lot of flex, meaning they’ll flex ear size as based on population. So, in a highly variable field, that might be a great strategy, just something that will really change. In other words, you can plant at a lower population, and if it’s a good year, you won’t take a yield hit. Versus a fixed-ear number, they’re really responsive to populations. It’s just even a bigger factor. Some numbers just require more. In order to produce at the top end, in general, you need more. You need more plants, but some numbers seem to be able to flex more than others. So, that goes into yield efficiency because if you can plant a number at a lower rate and still achieve the same yield, you could potentially add 10 or 15 dollars an acre in return.

TONY LICHT: To build off of just reallocating your rate around the field, as planters become more sophisticated, we can reallocate which hybrids go on which part of the field, assigning hybrids to zones or soil types and at different rates, as well. We’ve got a different cost point of the hybrid and a different rate to maximize the ROI.

DAN FRIEBERG: We have a lot of growers in the system that are doing multi-hybrid or multi-variety planting. Do you think that’ll continue to grow? Where do you see the trend on it?

TONY LICHT: We continue to be in a discovery phase with that, of trying to figure out the best placement of hybrids, the different rates of hybrids, like those treatment blocks behind you in your background, Dan. ELBs accelerating the learning of rate and also placement of hybrids helps us versus single-rate testing year over year. We definitely continue to try and find the bottom of the soybean population, but the issue with that is, all of a sudden, it becomes an unemotional decision. That’s at times looking at data points in January, February, March, but all of a sudden, sometimes, it becomes a little bit of an emotional decision in season. If I feel confident in the data in January that I can drill down a seeding-rate population to 120 or 110 or 100 thousand, and, all of a sudden, I might get cold feet in April. If it happens to be a really great spring, and we can get out and plant early and do everything we want to do early, all of a sudden, it may be an uncomfortable situation of: “Boy, I don’t know if I have enough. I don’t know if I have enough information on planting this lower rate this early. Maybe for safekeeping, I should just turn the population back up just a little bit.” So, it’s trying to balance the emotional decision versus the data decision back in the couple previous months to really drive and find the bottom of where we can go on populations. It’s just the same way in corn, in soybeans and corn. As far as wheat, how much we want to sow. I think everybody kind of knows where the optimal rates are, but where are the extreme rates, the highs and the lows that really maximize that yield efficiency?

seed yield efficiency

DAN FRIEBERG: I get copied in on a lot of the trial results. I’ve seen some 80,000 seed drops on soybeans that just did exceptional, and they were learning blocks or replicated trials. It really gets your attention because if you start trimming 50,000 seeds, and you get a higher yield, it really drives the dollars really fast.

TONY LICHT: Seed treatments and soybeans have really, really helped us drill down, I think, our populations, as well. We’re better protecting that seed to ensure that every one of them matters more to get up and out of the ground in a timely fashion.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, ultimately, driving up that yield efficiency score, helping growers profit more. Thank you guys for joining us today. So great to see you, so great to have you, and we’ll be back again. Thanks for listening to the Premier Podcast, where everything agronomic is economic.

Yield Efficiency at a Year-End Grower Meeting with SciMax Solutions

“I think people are really good looking at a 10,000-foot view, but when you dive deeper into the economics and profitability, that’s where the rubber meets the road.”
– Landon Aldinger, Farmer, Iowa Falls, IA

PETER BIXEL: Good afternoon. My name is Peter Bixel with SciMax Solutions, and today we’re north of Iowa Falls and visiting with a client of ours, Landon Aldinger.

LANDON ALDINGER: Hello. This is Landon Aldinger. I farm around the Iowa Falls area with my father Mike Aldinger. I am a fourth-generation farmer in our family. We currently run a row crop operation. We have some beef cattle, some hog operations and also have a sales and consulting business here in town called Precision Farm Management.

KATIE DECKER: Tell me a little bit about how you got started with SciMax and why you started working with Peter.

LANDON ALDINGER: Yeah, so I would have met Peter through my father, who, I believe, the connection point was through Latham, correct? Yeah, Latham Hi-Tech Seeds offered a service that was called seed to soil. My brother-in-law Randy and myself and my dad and my dad’s Latham RSM kind of introduced us. Dad was actively working with SciMax at the time through Latham, like I said, but we’ve kind of grown our relationship together over the years, adding various products.

KATIE DECKER: Do you still farm with your father?

LANDON ALDINGER: Yeah. We have a full corn and soybean farm. We have a few fat cattle here up at my place. We own some hog buildings that we do odds and ends with. And then we have a sales and consulting business, where we sell a full retail line of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, any crop protection products, and then also sell Latham Hi-Tech Seeds and Wyffels Hybrids.

KATIE DECKER: Talk through how you guys work together.

LANDON ALDINGER: I call Peter and then he doesn’t call me back. No, I’m just kidding. I’m kidding.

PETER BIXEL: It was that way.

LANDON ALDINGER: No, it’s the other way around, usually. I use all the folks at SciMax to assist in creating that crop plan for the year, obviously. Planning from seed placement, a variable-rate nitrogen piece, our variable-rate seeding rates, just pulling all that data together and maximizing our potential profitability and efficiencies. Then, we get to this time of year, where we’re looking backwards and kind of addressing: “How did we do in analyzing that?” The analytical side is why I enjoy the relationship. It’s easy to go out and just pick corn and say: “I got 200 bushel, or whatever you got, and that’s great.” But what did you do to dictate that outcome?

KATIE DECKER: Do you have an instance of a problem you guys were faced with, and then once you started working with SciMax, how they helped you overcome that?

LANDON ALDINGER: Yes, my grandpa actually owned the fertilizer plant.

PETER BIXEL: They had a fertilizer plant, so their fertility levels were really good. As they’ve been pulling off more yield, it just helps Landon now that we’ve been watching the fertility levels by the yield that they’ve been achieving and just being cognizant of what those levels are and how to address them, using the tools to basically fix or continue to keep them where t

hey’re at. They’ve done a lot of litter. A lot of chicken litter too, as well, to help source a lot of that stuff, and then the hog manure that Landon mentioned. So I’d say just really concentrate on those fertility levels to make sure to keep them up because that’s the thing that I think helped Landon’s grandpa, dad and then him, just having that good base. That foundation has really helped set the operation up for success.

KATIE DECKER: How does SciMax really help you get the most out of the data that you’re collecting?

LANDON ALDINGER: Like I said, I think in any system there isn’t always just one variable for success that you can tweak or fine-tune. It’s taking a part of the entire system, what your manure management practices are, what your fertility levels are that he’s talking about, how you’re placing the seed, where you’re placing the seed at what rates. Same with nitrogen. And I think the ability to dive into each one of those segments of that system and analyze this worked with this other combination but didn’t work so well over here, you almost get a blueprint for going forward. I think, as we’ve seen hybrids evolve or their genetics evolve over time, we can really start to tailor-make it to the hybrids. That’s where I see the biggest focus for me, I guess, being a seed dealer, and I carry that onto my customers, too.

PETER BIXEL: Yeah, I think that’s helped Landon, knowing his hybrids inside and then just kind of putting out the practice on his own acres and then seeing: “Okay, if we push it to 38 or 40,000 or something, does it pay?” Maybe it doesn’t because, again, back to the good fertility, everything else is set. So, now if you change that one variable, did it pay? And he can take that to others to help their operation if they’re similar.

LANDON ALDINGER: Or a combination of variables, too. Sometimes that data gets lost in the noise, and it’s hard to kind of separate it out and see. So, I think their services have helped us that way immensely.

PETER BIXEL: This year has just been a challenge because you don’t have Ethan and Tyson going through, each one of them, individually. Two people at Premier go through it all, and I know they have a lot. They go through each one, verify and then, if there’s a question, they send it to their in-house statistician. Then, they send those out, so it’s been taking like a month to get those reports back.

LANDON ALDINGER: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of stuff in there.

PETER BIXEL: Yeah, we just did it on population this year. That’s all that we looked at. We had two farms. Leto’s and Bradford, I think, were the two that we did.

KATIE DECKER: Can we talk a little bit more? Just go a little deeper into the decision making. How is Peter helping you make those decisions, both agronomically and economically, on your operation?

LANDON ALDINGER: I come from an angle of the seed perspective, being a seed salesman. I want to know everything I can about every hybrid and where it likes to live and how it likes to operate. We’ve done a lot. I think, probably, the bulk of the work that we’ve done with you is the variable-rate planting populations; that and the nitrogen piece for ourselves and customers. I mean, how many times do I call you and just on random stuff, too?

PETER BIXEL: Well, yeah, it’s not necessarily just about, I mean, from fungicide recommendations to product things. I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud here, but just anything in general. What do I use in my operation? I’ll tell him what I use, but it doesn’t mean he has to or, by any means, needs to. It’s just good, I think. It’s the same way back from him to me, not just me to him. It’s just a sound barrier or somebody to talk through things with and see if your plan or if your strategy makes sense.

LANDON ALDINGER: I think maybe more than one key aspect of that data-driven decision is just forcing operators to think in those terms: doing trials and setting them up and comparing products. I’m looking at two fungicides right behind you, and we had head-to-heads out there, and we learned. I mean, we’re going to look at the data, but I can look at it just visually and see that there was a difference. I think people are really good at just doing the visual 10,000-foot view, but you really have to dive into it and then start doing the whole, from the economics and the profitability side, which is where it really comes down to rubber meets the road.

KATIE DECKER: Can you tell me a little bit more about the trials that you’ve been doing? You don’t have to give me any specifics on certain products or varieties or anything, but maybe why you decided to do the trial and some things that you’ve learned.

LANDON ALDINGER: I’m just thinking in terms of this last year because we probably had a little bit more, but there’s always the fungicide head-to-head. There are always new products, comparing them to old standards and then running the cost analysis of how they compare versus yield. Standard stuff. Varieties. We do a lot of head-to-head populations within those varieties. At Leto’s, we had the high-yielding stuff.

FBscimaxpeterandlandon

PETER BIXEL: Landon was tissue sampling every week and then, basically, had a plan put together of what to apply and when. It’s different from what he was doing on other acres to see if he could push it or what we’d see.

LANDON ALDINGER: Correct.

KATIE DECKER: What do you think is the value of working with Peter and SciMax, in general? Why would you work with them over a competitor or someone else?

LANDON ALDINGER: Right now, I would put it mainly on trust. We talk, probably, I don’t even know how often but quite often. He’s just a trusted advisor, and I don’t really like that term, but it is. I know I’m getting the honest truth when I call him and he gives me his recommendation. And if it’s something different than what I see, then we try to dive into: “Why are my results different than what your results are?” But I think there’s just a trust factor right now, and that’s why we’ve continued to partner with them for the long term.

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Managing Profitability with Ag View Solutions

“We’re all about tying the economics to the agronomics, which just means when we’re adjusting nutrient rates and plant seeding rates and decisions about what we spend in different parts of the field, we’re tying that out at the end of the year.”
– Dan Frieberg

RENEE HANSEN: Welcome to the Premier Podcast, where everything agronomic is economic. Today, we’re talking with Shay Foulk with Ag View Solutions on his Ag View Pitch podcast. We recommend that you go listen to the Ag View Pitch podcast and subscribe. They have numerous podcasts out there with lots of valuable information. Today, Shay is talking with Dan Frieberg and Brenton Rossman about the value of Premier Crop.

SHAY FOULK: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today, you have Shay Foulk with some special guests from Premier Crop Systems. I appreciate everybody taking a little bit of time to join in. We have Dan Frieberg and Brenton Rossman, as well as Renee Hansen, tuning in. Dan and Brenton, I’m hoping here that we can get a good introduction from both of you and learn a little bit more about what Premier Crop Systems is. I’ll preface this by saying we really enjoy having this perspective and different conversations on what organizations can provide and what value they can bring to the farmers that are listening to this podcast. So, if we could just start with a quick introduction from each of you and get going from there.

DAN FRIEBERG: Sure, I’ll go first. Dan Frieberg, and I started the company in 1999. Really, Shay, it was kind of the advent of a lot of spatial files, meaning georeferenced files. So, if you think of a yield file, we were starting to be able to tie the yield monitor out to a GPS receiver. Then, soil sampling and variable-rate nutrient activity was going on. So, it was just all this agronomic data that now could be georeferenced to a spot in the world. It was just kind of born out of that idea of being able to tie it all out and build a database file that is a georeference for each field each year and be able to analyze the results and provide insights and turn that into action the next year. The company does just a lot of variable-rate activity. We just believe that the right rate changes within a field boundary. That’s how we got started, and I’ll let Brenton go from his perspective.

BRENTON ROSSMAN: Yeah, thanks. Brenton Rossman. I’ve been with Premier Crop Systems for five years now. Started with the company right after college. Primarily work with our retail partners in delivering our program through the retail channel. So, I live in northwest Iowa, which is where I grew up and have the opportunity to help on my family’s farm. I enjoy getting to utilize our tools and get firsthand use with them on our own operation, as well. Happy to be visiting with you today.

SHAY FOULK: Yeah, that’s great. When it comes to that georeferencing that you were talking about, Dan, I recently read a report that anywhere from 62 to 70% of farmers across the United States are utilizing some form of yield mapping systems or variable-rate applications. How have you seen the adoption of these technologies change over the last decade or so, in particular, I guess, through the Midwest here, where we’re generally located? What do you think that opportunity looks like in the future?

DAN FRIEBERG: I think we went through a period of high commodity prices the last time. The equipment companies, really, were one of the beneficiaries of high commodity prices. So, a whole bunch of people upgraded equipment, and every time that happens, they upgrade technology, as well. Then, that means that the technology they were using passes to the next buyer of that equipment. So, there’s kind of this ripple effect of more and more technology. That’s why surveys come back like that, but what we find is a lot of people aren’t really utilizing the data the way we think it’s possible. So, a yield monitor can become “Harvest TV,” where it’s almost like an expensive moisture sampler, which is great because you’re able to direct grain to the right spot for drying and things like that. But we think there’s so much more possibility to use your yield file as a way to measure agronomic and economic success.

SHAY FOULK: You better be careful, Dan. I might steal that “Harvest TV” and make a YouTube channel out of it. I like that term. Brenton, from your perspective as the farmer and the background that you’ve had with your family operation there, how long have you had some of this technology in the farm operation, and where do you see advancements from the farmer perspective moving forward?

BRENTON ROSSMAN: I would say my dad has been a fairly early adopter to the hardware side of the technology. Variable-rate drives on our planter probably the last 12 years, at least, I would say. Collecting yield since the nineties. So, we’ve been early adopters on that stage of the conversation, but as far as taking that information that we’ve been collecting, if you go into my dad’s office, he’s got notebooks and binders full of maps, all of this information, but now we’ll be able to use the data behind that information. So, where I see it going is just the ability to collect, analyze more of this machine data and information, have it stored in one location and then utilize the power of computers and software to, then, look at it in different ways so we can make decisions going forward.

SHAY FOULK: I think how you phrase that is a great segue into the next question that I have. I know some of what you deal with, with Premier Crop Systems, is looking at yield efficiency and how are we taking these variables and making really good decisions with it? So, Dan, I was wondering if you can kind of talk on some more specific things that Premier Crop offers to the farm operations that they’re working with. What does that look like today if someone was interested in finding out more about what you all do?

DAN FRIEBERG: Gladly. Shay, a lot of times, we use the phrase “everything agronomic is economic.” We’re all about tying the economics to the agronomics, which just means when we’re adjusting nutrient rates and plant seeding rates and decisions about what we spend in different parts of the field, we’re tying that out at the end of the year. So, we’re capturing that spatially. That cost is tied to the file. If we recommend and encourage you to plant more seeds in what we think is the best part of the field, we’re capturing that additional seed cost as an input cost. We can map it all the way to breakeven cost per bushel, and that would include land and management costs, but we describe yield efficiency as return to land and management at a benchmark selling price. The user interface lets the grower set their own selling price, so it’s calculating revenue minus what you invested in nutrients, crop protection, seed and field operations. Shay, we wanted a way to take land cost and management cost out of the benchmarking nature of it. We found that land cost can really be a real distortion when you’re trying to benchmark across operations. It’s really that same message. If we adjust inputs, we’re tracking the cost either up or down. So, we’re able, at the end of the year, to show whether that was the right decision or not.

SHAY FOULK: I was talking with a really good operation here in western Illinois, about 30 minutes before we were recording this podcast here. He made the comment that you kind of have to have three to four years of good information to make decisions off of it. And, of course, there’s low hanging fruit. Year one, you’re going to see some things that are pointed out: variable rates, quickly identify issues, particularly when it comes to soil sampling or plant tissue sampling, and learn more about your operation. You use the term benchmark there, and, with some of what we do, we’re very careful with benchmarking from a standpoint of no two operations are the same. But I think what, sometimes, people get confused with is benchmarking doesn’t have to be against other farm operations. Benchmarking against your own operation, and, like you said, that land cost can throw such a wrench in understanding how that ties into an overall system and what management decisions you can be making out of that. But I’m sure that information is extremely powerful once you have two, three, four years worth of information at your own benchmark and then making decisions for your operation moving forward. Do you have any comments on that?

DAN FRIEBERG: I think, for me, the internal benchmark, like you say, is by far the most powerful. Amazingly, the growers love to benchmark against each other. Sometimes, I don’t understand why, but they love to be able to see beyond their own operation. So, whenever they look beyond their own operation, it’s anonymous, and they don’t know who they’re benchmarking against, and it can be extremely local or regional or a fairly good-sized group. So, benchmarking, growers love that piece of it, and they love the economic piece too. Personally, I think the most powerful is within your own operation, just field by field and then drilling down within a field by management zones. Shay, the one thing I would tell you is we’ve come up with a way to start making decisions even quicker. In 2005, we started putting check blocks inside prescriptions, and we trademark that as learning blocks. A learning block is just a comparison area. It’s like introducing an experiment into the field, and we’ve just automated the process. That’s kind of what software is really good at, is automating processes. But what it does is it lets you, in a single year, it lets you go to school in areas of the field. It’s really, really popular. If I suggested you plant 39,000 in the best part of the field, you’d have anxiety about whether that was too much or not, or whether it was worth the seed investment. But you’d try an acre. You would try an acre of 39,000 in a heartbeat just to see if it worked or see if it paid. So, learning blocks, now we’ve added more to that where you can do replicated trials. You can do multiple rates and have it be replicated, but it’s really opened the door to how do I get there quicker? How do I get on that journey of making decisions and getting this constant feedback? Every year is different. So, what you said a little bit ago is exactly right. Three or four years of data is way better than one year, but you can get started really quick. We’ve had people start where, like on variable-rate soybeans, they were so unsure of what to do that they just seeded the field at the normal rate, and they put a bunch of learning blocks in just to experiment with different rates.

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SHAY FOULK: That’s great. One thing I want to go back to on the benchmarking, too, is a reason why a lot of farm operations that we work with like that exterior benchmarking. I’m not saying benchmarking is bad, so I don’t want that to be misconstrued here. But the reason they like that additional benchmarking is, sometimes, as farmers, we are the CEOs and the shareholders and the managers and the laborers all in one. Not every operation is a collaborative opportunity amongst different farmers. Not everybody has a community infrastructure where they can ask questions and look at economics in comparison, or maybe they don’t even have a family member to rely on, anywhere from first-generation farmers to someone that has just had to take on a lot of responsibility. So, I can see that benchmarking being a very valuable tool and then taking that information, like you said, with these learning blocks and applying that as quickly as possible. Brenton and I were talking here offline. One of the challenges with the learning process with some of this data is when it gets to variety or hybrid-specific crop analysis because in the industry, I mean, three to five years is about the lifetime that we’re seeing in these, and you can’t always make good decisions. About the time you learn what a hybrid does or how it responds, aside from the information that you’re getting from the seed companies, right when you get comfortable with it, there’s something else new out. And you have to take advantage of that because of the genetics and because of the advancements that we’re seeing in chemistry and herbicide resistance and things like that. So, I guess, Brenton, can you talk about that a little bit from a farmer perspective? It sounds like there are other things that we can quickly learn. Then, as we learn these products, the variety and hybrid-specific products, we can continue to make good decisions off of that, correct?

BRENTON ROSSMAN: Yeah, and that’s one thing. A passion of mine is on farm trialing and learning as much as I can, trying to put data into practice on our own farm to make the next step faster with a hybrid in year two or year three if this was its first year in season. What can we learn about all the different agronomic situations or scenarios on our own farm? How do hybrids perform differently? Lighter ground, heavier ground. High soil test P and K versus low soil test areas. We’ve done a lot of population trials on our farm, and it’s interesting. Definitely not bashing seed companies or anything, but we’ve done trials where we plant a certain hybrid at 35,000. That may be the suggested rate. On a certain soil type in a certain environment on my own fields, we see the highest return at 31,000 seeds per acre, so a lower seeding rate. Just having the ability to do some of this testing on our own farm, learning about the local environment, I’m going to trust the data from my own farm and use that for making decisions going forward.

SHAY FOULK: Well, and Dan, you said it really well at the beginning of this podcast. You have variability within your field boundaries. Whether it’s a 10-acre field, a 4,400-acre field, it doesn’t matter what size it is. There’s variability, and farmers know how to manage that instinctively, especially as you get time and experience in there. But if we can take that information from learning blocks or farm management zones and make better decisions off of it, hopefully we can learn quicker, and hopefully we can save money. Are you guys generating profit maps at this point?

DAN FRIEBERG: We do. Right now, it’s breakeven cost per bushel.

SHAY FOULK: Okay.

DAN FRIEBERG: So, we kind of focus that way, and it goes back to that we want to deliver the map the second yield file hits versus when the crop is marketed. A lot of growers sell over a 12-month period, so they don’t actually know their selling price, a lot of times, until months after harvest.

SHAY FOULK: That’s where the marketing decisions can be key, though, on knowing that cost of production and having it dialed in. Of course, that’s what we spend a lot of time working with growers on, and Chris and I will be the first ones to tell anybody out there. We run a system called Profit Manager, and you don’t have to use Profit Manager. You can use university systems. You can use any number of programs that are out there, but knowing that cost of production, and then how it ties back into the whole operation, is key and, I think, looking at it at a breakeven cost. If I know, as a farmer, instinctively, what my cost of production is, if I have that dialed into the penny, for me, let’s say it’s $3.72 or whatever it is on corn. If I’m looking at an area of the field that’s saying, hey, your breakeven is $5.43 here, that’s pretty eye-opening because we market in bushels. We’re not marketing off of dollars revenue per acre most of the time. Some operations do it that way, and they are successful at that, but it can be a pretty easy way to look at that. So, I think that’s interesting from the profit mapping perspective. How long have you been doing that?

DAN FRIEBERG: We actually started doing that in the very beginning. Almost killed the company in 1999 by doing it because what we ran into when we rolled it out is, first of all, back then, there was a lot of disorganization among growers. So, you would ask a grower for the cost information, and they would hand you a folder full of seed invoices and say, here, you sort it out. Back then, there were just a lot of growers who weren’t super organized. We’ve transitioned a lot in the last 20 years. But the second thing, Shay, is it really ratchets up the trust level between the grower. When you’re starting to track, when you really are getting to breakeven cost per bushel, that’s the most private information. If you put your actual land and management costs into it, too, that’s really private information. It’s the P and L for the field, so it’s super private. We kind of walked our way into it. Now, a lot of times, people start out, and it’s a faster transition now than it was back then. But they kind of have to get confidence before they’re really willing to share every detail about their operations.

SHAY FOULK: Yeah, and I understand that. I mean, farmers have a certain level of independence that they like, and there’s a reason, sometimes, that they’re in the industry because they’re their own boss. They can make the decisions. They can choose who they share the information with. So many operations we’ve seen have taken the understanding of, maybe, I can’t do all of this as effectively as someone else can by helping me. I talk with people all the time on that. When it comes to the reservation of sharing numbers, folks like us with the consulting side, or you all with the data management, we don’t care personally what John Farmer’s numbers are in north central Iowa or southwest Indiana. I mean, we don’t have the capacity to do anything with that information nor would we want to. We keep that wholly private, and having conversations with you all offline, too, I think, is one of the reasons I wanted to conduct this podcast. It’s just understanding that anytime you can get linked in with a company that really, truly values what the farmer is looking for and providing the value in that relationship and ensuring that they have that privacy and that the numbers aren’t going to be shared, and you’re just here as a provider to help them grow, that’s an excellent business model. I really appreciate it from that perspective. Go ahead, Dan.

DAN FRIEBERG: Shay, when you were talking about the high-cost areas of fields, you were talking about breakeven cost per bushel, and then you said, but what if I have an area that’s $5.42 or whatever. That happens. That’s real. We typically don’t tell any grower that we’re going to save them money because, a lot of times, if we save money on one part of the field, we invest it in another part of the field. But there are parts of fields where not investing as much is the only way you can lower your breakeven cost per bushel. You just can’t continue to invest the same in those parts of the field. You still have to farm them, but, for us, it’s all about making sure that the investment in crop protection and nutrients and seed is right for that area of the field. Sometimes, those are the best success stories, just learning to manage your investment in those poor-producing areas. Again, on a per-acre basis, you’re going to spend that money on the best part, but investing less in the worst part of the field, sometimes, is the only way to lower your breakeven.

SHAY FOULK: Brenton, I’m going to pick on you for a couple of minutes here. Dan, having tons, decades of experience here and starting the company, for you, with the — and I’m not saying Dan doesn’t — but having the real boots on the ground and talking with farmers all the time and having these conversations, what would you say makes Premier Crop Systems different from others in the industry that are doing some of this? What do you think the future of this type of business is? How do you see it continuing to provide value to farmers?

BRENTON ROSSMAN: I think the first thing that partners I work with, or growers I come into contact with, is they appreciate our independence as a company not tied to any input sales. We sell our service and our solutions. So, that’s important to me, and I think that’s important to a lot of our customers, as well, and also having a system that is not a canned output. Output from our system changes based on the grower’s goals. Advisors have the ability to customize their delivery, maybe, as Farmer John, for example, has a real interest in dialing in his fertility rates and maximizing his efficiency with that aspect of his operation. But Farmer Tom down the road is much more interested in the seed side of things, so just the ability to have a holistic solution that is completely customizable. I just think the business model, or that mentality, going forward will just continue to have success as the farmer of the future continues to evolve, and the younger generation, like myself, becomes more involved and wants to make decisions from data, has questions and really wants to dive into this information.

SHAY FOULK: One thing I would add to that is, you said it there in a little bit of a different way, but even though we’re moving towards making better management decisions, it doesn’t make things less complex necessarily. There are more and more high-management situations and high-management decisions to push the yield or to push the yield efficiency in some cases, too. I think, as we start experimenting and working with more of these things, whether you’re putting liquid in your planter, or you’re having a multipass nitrogen system, or you’re trying any number of biological products or a lot of the great programs that are out there right now, I think it gets even more important at that level of managing that information because, not only on a cost of production side, but from an information overload side. Is what I’m doing really working? Is what I’m doing really having the yield efficiency outlook that I want and providing the revenue back based on the time, effort, money in management that I’m putting into it? So, I think, as we gain the complexity in these operations, you have to have some sort of data management system that reports back to you or that you can take those numbers and do something with it because it has to be actionable. Dan, I think you hit on this early on. We’ve had this yield mapping information for 20 years or more at this point. We’ve had variable-rate planting information, and yet, today, I still get questions probably once a week on, well, where are your soybean planting rates at? Or what are other farm operations doing for nitrogen and fertility management? There’s nothing wrong with asking those questions, but in order to take that next step in the farming operation, we have to take actionable information and do something with it. So, Dan, I don’t know if you have any other comments on that.

DAN FRIEBERG: No, just everything you said is right on. It’s also like what you were talking about. Before the podcast, I was asking you about your experience with cover crops because that’s a big one we get. There are a lot of growers who have never done anything with cover crops, so they’re wanting insights or wanting to know the economics, and we’re constantly trying to figure out how we help prove it out quicker. That’s exactly why I was asking for your experience, because there’s just a lot of attention right now on cover crops.

SHAY FOULK: Absolutely. Is there anything that I’m not asking or anything that you’d want the listeners of this podcast to keep in mind as we move forward? The podcast is distributed all over the United States and Canada, farm operations of any shape and size. What message would you want to leave the listeners of this podcast with, as we wrap up here?

DAN FRIEBERG: Agronomy is local. What matters in one part of the country sure doesn’t in another part of the country, or it’s different. So, nitrogen management would be a great example, where what strategy you use really changes based on where you are. There are major east-west differences. There are big north-south differences. That agronomy local message is really a key. When you were talking about benchmarking, and we were talking about sharing data, it’s one of the reasons growers love these aggregated data sets that we talk about, where you’re anonymously comparing to other operations. It lets you see hybrids and varieties that you didn’t get to plant. You probably had 30 or 40 elite numbers pitched to you, and you might’ve planted 10 of them. But at the end of the year, you’d like to know how the other 30 that you passed on did. It’s just all part of that learning faster. How does everybody learn faster? Having a data platform to help growers learn faster is just a big piece of where our hearts are at and where we believe our future’s at.

SHAY FOULK: From your point there, Dan, too, I want to bring in a point from Brenton and I’s conversation here a week or week and a half ago, whenever it was, of that independence. You’re not tied to a seed company. You’re not tied to a chemical company. So, regardless of which of those top 40 hybrids did best or varieties, or maybe it wasn’t even one of those that was pitched to you that just had a fantastic year, being able to learn from that information and seeing it and having it available and understanding how it might fit into your management zones on the farm operation. It can make some of those decisions a little bit easier. The other thing that’s really unique about this is, not only with it being non-identifiable back to a particular operation or not being able to see anybody’s particular numbers, is when it comes to managing those decisions. If you have 40 products in front of you, it can be really overwhelming, but being able to take that and make those decisions faster, I really appreciate that perspective. I’m going to turn to you, Brenton, on this. If someone’s listening to this and wants to learn more about Premier Crop Systems, how do they get a hold of you guys? How do they ask some of these key questions and see what your services look like?

BRENTON ROSSMAN: I’d say the best way to get a hold of us would be to just visit our website. From the website premiercrop.com, there’ll be a link on there for contacting us. Then, we’ll get you in touch with the right person.

SHAY FOULK: Absolutely. Dan Frieberg and Brenton Rossman, I really appreciate the time today, guys. Hopefully, those listening to the podcast got some value out of this, whether you choose to talk to someone at Premier Crop Systems, or just taking the information that you’ve learned here and maybe thinking about it as a different way. We have an exciting, new 2021 season ahead of us, and we all get opportunities to make good decisions. And the farmer is the eternal optimist. So, getting linked in with some of these people that can help your operation and take it to the next level, I think, is so important to hear more about those of you in the industry who are doing some of these things. So, Dan and Brenton, I really appreciate the time.

DAN FRIEBERG: Thank you, great to be with you.

SHAY FOULK: Thanks to Renee and Molly for getting us linked in. Really glad that we can do this. And, most importantly, thank you to everyone on the Ag View Pitch for tuning into another podcast, and we will catch you next time.

RENEE HANSEN: Thanks for listening to the Premier Podcast, where everything agronomic is economic. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast, so we can continue to provide the best precision ag and analytic results for you. And to learn more about Premier Crop, visit our blog at premiercrop.com.

Ag technology Big Data cost per bushel data analytics economics farm data farming yield efficiency

Six Frustrations with Precision ag

“Growers tell me they are frustrated with precision ag, they’ve invested in the technology. I tell them, ‘You just want to put the pieces of the puzzle together to see exactly what the picture is.’ And they are relieved when Premier Crop can help.”

– Katie McWhirter, Director of Training and Development

RENEE HANSEN: Today, we’re talking with Katie McWhirter, our Manager of Training and Development. Katie is chatting with us about the frustrations of precision ag. Katie, tell us a little bit about your background and a little more about you and your role at Premier Crop?

KATIE MCWHIRTER: I was born on your typical farm in southeast Iowa, livestock and row crop. My father’s just now retiring, but funny as he is, he is in his late sixties, and in 2013, he invested in electric drives to be able to variable-rate seed. He variable-rates his fertilizer. He does all that, which is so not what people think of that generation, embracing technology like that, but he knew that, working with me, he’d be able to make use of that equipment that he was investing in. Then, on the flip side, I have a brother who was, I guess for lack of better words, gifted or brought into the row crop world. He’s actually in the livestock industry and doesn’t have that technology, but we started talking one day, and he said: ‘I think I can use my data to do better. It’s not that good.’ So, talking with him, does he have the latest and greatest? No. But, again, his data is everywhere, and it’s just meeting him where he’s at to say, okay, I realize you don’t have this technology or this technology, but we can still use what you have to make a better decision. Even as recent as about an hour ago, I’m entering in some of his costs and his inputs to really make him see that there is variability within his operation even at a field level, which means profitability is variable at that field level. So, I’m excited to watch his journey as he gets more into this space.

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FRUSTRATION #1: CONNECTIVITY

RENEE HANSEN: So, Katie, what would you say? We were talking before we hit record on this podcast, how do you come up with a list of five to 10 things that growers don’t like or are frustrated about with ag technology?

KATIE MCWHIRTER: Well, those frustrations definitely vary in the different hats that I wear. Probably the biggest frustration is that these technologies, if you’re talking about in or on the equipment, would be that they don’t communicate together, especially if they’re not a solid color, meaning they’re not all the same brand of equipment. That is a frustration for growers. I would say, also, a very big frustration, and funny as I’ve been out here in the last couple weeks, growers don’t think that they could, I wouldn’t say, benefit from our services, but they’re very worried because they don’t think their data is good. So, it’s two combines, it’s three combines, it’s not calibrated. How can you change some of these frustrations? What we can do, is take that data, and as long as it’s capturing that variability and we have an end measurement, whether that’s going to be bushels or yield, we can post-calibrate or make that data usable within our system. I think even the simplest technologies really can benefit from what we do.

I think one of the things I’ve learned is that we really have to ask questions to these growers to find out, when they talk about ag technology, no different than what I did with you, to find out what exactly they’re frustrated with. If they’re frustrated with data, what do they mean by that? I mean, is it they’re frustrated because they’ve got two or three combines or two or three planters and it’s not all brought together? Is it because they don’t feel like they’re getting a complete picture? I met with a grower yesterday who said: ‘The soil sampling is here. We’ve got these spreadsheets on our computer. Their data’s all over the place.’ I smiled, and I said: ‘You just want to put the pieces of the puzzle together to see exactly what the picture is.’ They’re like: ‘Yes, that’s what we want because we’ve invested in it. We know that each of those separately has been bringing us value, but it’s also bringing us frustration as we know we should be bringing them all together to make an even better decision.’

FRUSTRATION #2: DATA ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH

RENEE HANSEN: What was some of his biggest hesitation? I know you mentioned that he felt his data wasn’t good enough but elaborate on that a little bit more. Tell me more about that.

KATIE MCWHIRTER: Well, the yield monitor doesn’t have a card in it, so we haven’t been collecting yield data. So, I mean, the basics of what we’ve always said is a must. It’s really what we’re rooted in, but with our new planning tools, I immediately was like: ‘Okay, but there’s so much more we can do even by putting together, at the field level, his yield goals and his expected revenue and his variable-rated nutrients because he’s been grid sampling.’ Even though he doesn’t have what we, even a month ago, thought was an essential piece of what we had to have to be able to work with a grower, he’s going to test me on this one because he’ll get a yield monitor. That’s the agreement by fall, but I believe we can still provide him value being early enough and being able to identify his yield efficiency scores, his planned yield efficiency scores in each field, to be able to potentially identify profit robbers and how we could try to lessen that on his operation as a whole. Yeah, he definitely was hesitant until I showed him. I’m like: ‘Here’s what I need.’ And he immediately says to me, he’s pointing at the paper, and he’s like: ‘I’ve got this. I’ve got this. I’ve got this.’ I’m like: ‘Yeah, you’ve got the pieces. Let’s get them put together.’

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, putting it together all in one system, and you also mentioned connection and connectivity. I mean, that seems to be everything’s everywhere. So, you also tell me, what are you doing to help him solve that and get all the information into one spot? I mean, you are doing some of the work for him.

KATIE MCWHIRTER: Right. So, I get the pleasure of contacting the people on his agronomy team. I think, before, some people might’ve seen us as the competition or a threat, and what I’ve said to both his seed supplier and his crop protection and fertilizer salesperson is I’m not here to step on your toes. I don’t sell those things. What I’m doing is I’m trying to help him be more profitable. That’s been fun to talk with his team, and, in fact, as soon as I start putting these pieces together, I want to meet with his team and show them what we’re trying to do for him in order to make him a more profitable farmer.

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FRUSTRATION #3: DIFFERENT COLORS OF EQUIPMENT

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, and what about the color of equipment with numerous different colors of equipment? Or the farmer, the grower, isn’t applying some of their inputs. Somebody else is doing it for them. How do we go about getting some of that information?

KATIE MCWHIRTER: Oh, definitely. Again, I met with another grower yesterday, and as we’re talking, sometimes they think all this information has to be captured somewhere or captured on a monitor. It has to be captured somewhere, but there are so many different pieces of information that we keep track of. I think that is a really big misconception, what data is. Some people, I’ve laughed, they think it’s a singular thing. For us, it’s a plural. I mean, so much data can be collected not necessarily on a monitor. So, putting that all together in one system, be able to look at it, to get a clear picture as far as what’s correlating yield or, more importantly, what’s driving profitability or, better yet, holding the entire operation back from being more profitable.

FRUSTRATION #4: IS A PRECISION AG SERVICE PROFITABLE

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, you’re talking about some of the things that they can start inputting and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. So, what’s the output? What do they get? What are we giving a grower? How is it going to benefit him?

KATIE MCWHIRTER: What it gives the grower is a clear picture of their operation as far as profitability, that return to land and management. The numbers don’t lie. I mean, I’ve always said the numbers do not lie. Take the emotion out of it, but that’s not where it stops. Essentially, it’s a continuous cycle. Don’t give me a pretty map, and that’s great, right? Don’t give me that. I need you to be able to, and our growers need us to be able to, without any bias, to say: ‘Here’s what we could do with it.’ Ultimately, it’s going to be the grower’s decision, and that’s what I was telling the grower yesterday. We’re never going to do anything that you don’t want to do, but we will challenge you as far as this is what we’re seeing in the data, and if you’re wanting to improve, it really looks like this is an area that we could focus on.

FRUSTRATION #5: FEAR OF CHANGING EVERYTHING AT ONCE

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, something that you mentioned, Katie, was it’s a continuous cycle and how it’s never ending. You’re constantly learning. So, even at year one, there is so much that we can learn about. So, tell me, what does a grower learn at year one?

KATIE MCWHIRTER: Which is funny because, when I got back into working directly with growers, that was one of the questions that they asked me when we were first sitting down: ‘What do you think we’re going to learn this year?’ As I was getting all this data from him, and I’m like: ‘I don’t even want to take a guess.’ I have a suspicion, but I don’t want to say it out loud, but I think it was just their biggest ‘aha’ was I’ve never looked at my data like this before. I’ve seen it on the typical red, yellow, orange, three-shades-of-green map. Maybe I’ve done a little bit of comparison in some of these other platforms before, but never have I looked at it this way before. Whether that was in charts or in our data visualization tools and then, ultimately, to tie those costs back to it. Some of the things they thought, they were right, and some things they were kind of surprised, which has led to decisions. When I started with them in August, I mean, I told them I was not going to push them to anything that they didn’t want to do technology-wise. All of a sudden, we’re sitting down for our planning meeting in December. I’m like: ‘Oh my goodness. Four months ago, this is not where we were.’ I didn’t think this is where we were going, and now we’re jumping in the deep end of the pool. I don’t want you to do this and be uncomfortable. I want you very comfortable with the changes that you’re suggesting we make. That’s been fun, though, to lead people through because we all know that change is hard, and it’s very hard to get outside of our comfort zone. So, I actually start my sales training, my leadership training course, with: ‘Here’s your comfort zone, and outside of it, that’s where the magic happens.’ That’s so, so true with farmers.

premiercropyielddata_farmer

FRUSTRATION #6: DATA IS OVERWHELMING

RENEE HANSEN: I really think, and I see it too, just within our own family operation too, that sometimes you can get so comfortable diving into something new, they want to, a grower wants to get into something new, but it’s like, where do you start? How do you get started? It’s having a service, something that Premier Crop offers, something that you offer, just helping them, starting to input the information, contacting the people to get the information, knowing who to contact. So, right now in 2021, we’re at the beginning of March. Why would a grower need to get involved in something like this? Why should they wait?

KATIE MCWHIRTER: I don’t think they should wait. I think it could seem very overwhelming and don’t know where to start. It just takes that conversation to get them going. Really, I say, that’s why it’s so wonderful that we have the great group of advisors that we have to guide them through this process. We all like to be guided. We all like to know what’s next. I don’t care if it’s the program at church, the bulletin to what’s next. Or when you get on an airplane overseas, and it’s saying: ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. Then, this.’ That just puts everybody to ease and guide them along. Our advisors, it’s like we farm with them. I mean, I know I wasn’t going to go back and farm, but that love of agriculture and helping farmers, that’s our group of advisers. That’s their characteristics, their qualities. They genuinely want to help because it’s like they’re farming.

RENEE HANSEN: Thanks for listening to the Premier Podcast, where everything agronomic is economic. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so we can continue to provide the best precision ag and analytic results for you. To learn more about Premier Crop, visit our blog at premiercrop.com.

Learn more about the power of precision ag.

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Unlock Insights to Your Farming Operation

“Data is valuable, but data in the hands of the right people with the right context is really, really valuable.” – T.J. Masker

RENEE HANSEN: You are listening to the Premier Podcast, where everything agronomic is economic. Today, we are talking with T.J. Masker, Senior Product Manager at Tractor Zoom, headquartered in Urbandale, Iowa. They are focused on helping bring price transparency to farm equipment and valuations for farmers, bankers, equipment dealers and insurance companies. T.J. has a lot of experience and knowledge in the precision ag space, and today, I asked him questions on how to unlock new insights to your farming operation using precision ag. Hey, T.J., welcome to the Premier Podcast. Just wanted to talk to you a little bit about unlocking some of the new insights to a farming operation, and I know you have a lot of experience. So, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, I grew up on a small family farm in southwest Iowa and did the traditional thing. Went to Iowa State, got an ag business degree, but for the last, well, about 11 years of my career, I’ve been working directly with farmers, helping them manage and understand their data better. So, whether that be agronomic data like soil tests, machine data that we get around like fuel usage or, in my current role helping farmers really value farm equipment, as that’s becoming the second highest cost on the balance sheet. What we’re really trying to understand is how we can make better decisions from that data. But the common theme is that ever since I went to Iowa State and graduated college, I’ve been passionate about helping farmers with data to make better decisions.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, you’ve had a lot of experience with data since you’ve been working in the field. So, can you tell me that? What is your experience with other precision ag systems, and what makes data so important?

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, I remember this, probably, like it was yesterday. I was covering a territory in south-central Iowa for one of the major seed brands. And I had farmers who kept asking me, like: ‘What can we do with this data? How do we start to think about how we utilize it more?’ This was almost eight years ago, and I literally Googled, like, ‘farm data’ something or another, and it led me, ironically enough, to Premier Crop and filled out the ‘contact us’ button. Then, I think it was Tony or Ben or somebody who reached out to me about: ‘Hey, we’d love to talk to you, understand where you’re coming from.’ And that ultimately led me to working with Premier Crop about seven-and-a-half years ago and doing direct advising with farmers in central Iowa. And many of those farms that I worked with back in the day, I’m still really close with today as I’m trying to solve new and unique problems, but I think, at that time, I had zero experience with precision ag. So, I had to learn how to set up the monitors, what Ag Leader SMS was, what software was to make better decisions. It was also my job to go out and recruit farms and help their operation. So, I think, over that time, I had to learn a tremendous amount about precision ag, what it was capable of. But, ultimately, I think for me, what it came down to is there’s so much value in this data and what we can get out of it if we’re measuring things correctly. And I think one of the things I experienced, even with the farms that have been collecting data for 15 years, was that, man, if we get this data structured in a way, it’s going to allow us to unlock so much potential. And whether that be if you’re using Climate FieldView or using John Deere Ops Center or using Granular, where I was at. It doesn’t matter unless the data is structured in a way that you can get the results out of it. And that, to me, was always the biggest ‘light bulb moment’ for a lot of the farmers.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, so since you’ve had the experience working with multiple different systems, what makes a specific platform better than another?

T.J. MASKER: When I talk to farmers about it, it’s really measuring the ROI, I think. Dan, I probably coined his phrase too, but if every agronomic decision is an economic decision, and we think about things that way, it fundamentally changes why we might do something. So, I think about systems that are able to actually provide that value to you as a farmer, and there’s not a ton of them out there. But we also need those systems that allow us to move data more easily. So, that’s why Climate, John Deere Ops Center, Ag Leader AgFiniti is another great example. Those tools help us get the data from the farm into the trusted advisor or the partner’s hands really quickly to make better decisions. That is valuable. I can tell you that there’s a reason why those tools are so heavily used because it solves a pain point. What I like to think about is: that’s one step. The next step is taking all this data and turning it into a better plan for next year. So, if I was at Granular, the way I described this problem is like: ‘I need to understand what we did and then how we did to understand what we need to do differently next year.’ So, if you focus on farmers collecting all this data on what they did, let’s get the scorecard for how they did at the end of the year. So, tools like Premier Crop. You think about all the things you can do with the query tool to answer questions from your data. Then, the real power is like: ‘All right. Using all this data, I now know with a high level of confidence going into next year that I’m going to have the best possible plan I can have.’ Mother Nature and God willing, things are going to fall into place. Well, let’s use everything we’ve learned to come up with the best possible plan, and we’ll adjust in season, right? Planting could get delayed by two weeks, so we might have to adjust seeding rates. All those things come into play, but let’s start with the best possible plan. And I think that starts with collecting and analyzing really great data throughout the previous growing season or previous seasons if you will, if you think about how many years of data a farm might have.

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RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, I think you said something in there, like competence, where a grower just really needs to have that competence within the data. They’re collecting so much of it anyway. So, getting a grower started, it seems really overwhelming sometimes, just to get started with data because of the systems that you mentioned. They have Climate. They’re using John Deere Ops. Then, to add another system to their whole platform can seem really overwhelming.

T.J. MASKER: What’s funny is I’ve done customer discovery the last seven-plus years in my different product roles, and if you talk to every farmer, they’ll tell you they just want one system to manage everything. And the reality is that’s not possible. I think what we need to do as an industry to be better is to make things connected more easily, and you’re starting to see that. And the easier we can make it to connect different parts of the puzzle to the key people that need it, that is where you really drive value for the farmer. Because if you think about all the trusted people that the farmer is working for, you’ve got agronomists. You’ve got an equipment dealer. You’ve got a seed rep. You’ve got a banker. You’ve got probably a commodity broker advisor, potentially. So, you start to see all of these people that are helping the farmer with all the information that they have. It becomes really powerful if you can connect all those dots, and I think, for a while, we as an ag industry or a tech industry didn’t do a good job of this. I think everyone was trying to build a complete way to solve every problem. And now you’re starting to see that change quite a bit, and I believe it’s for the better because the more connected these things are, and the less you can alleviate a lot of the pain of getting data from one spot to another, the better off everyone’s going to be.

RENEE HANSEN: In one of our previous podcasts, we talked about how you need to connect all the pieces of the puzzle, and it sounds exactly what you’re talking about. You just need to connect everything together. It’s one big puzzle, and when you finally get it together, it starts to work like it’s more of a system. Growers have all this information. They have these systems. They have monitors. They have the tractors, like you said, that they’re heavily invested in. So, why would they invest in a service that helps them manage their data, that helps them make better decisions? Why should they do that?

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, I think this is really important, and I think understanding who you’re partnering with is really important too, from a farmer perspective. So, I think you’re going to see a lot of the bigger ag companies continue to invest in this space for good reason, right? They know there’s a tremendous amount of value in this data. What I also think is extremely valuable is what that independent advisor can mean to your farm. For example, I was out at one of the farms I used to work with on Friday, and we talked a lot about this. If you think about 7-8 years ago, where they were at, they were trying to manage it in house. They were writing their own fertilizer recommendations. They were collecting all their data. And now, fundamentally, they’re approaching things differently, and every year they’re trying to chip away at this thing. So, a great example is when I started working with them 7½-8 years ago. We talked a lot about: ‘Wow, you guys can grow really great soybeans. What if we grew more soybeans, for example?’ It was funny to talk with them on Friday. And as they approach planting season this year, they’re going to start one planter on corn and one planter on soybeans at the same time because the data has shown them that if they get in earlier on soybeans and get those soybeans in, there is X-yield gain from that. And that wouldn’t have been the case seven-and-a-half years ago. What data allows us to do is to test little things, and the way I always approached it with farmers was like: ‘Give it three years.’ We have the data that tells us that this decision is likely to produce a positive outcome. If we try it, we can’t just try it for one year. We have to commit to trying it for three because odds are, over those three years, we’re going to see that return. So, I think that’s where the power of having a system or a service to manage that is critically important. And I think you’re starting to see a few others come up in this space, as well, because they probably realize a little bit of the model of that trusted advisor is the most powerful model. And it’s because, fundamentally — again, I think Dan will probably laugh — but agronomy is local. What works for the Des Moines Lobe might not work as well where I’m from in southwest Iowa. It might not work as well for my buddy that farms in eastern Iowa. Data’s valuable, but data in the hands of the right people with the right context is really, really valuable. I think a lot of farmers are frustrated with managing that data. So, how do you find somebody that can help you and kind of provide that ROI? And, at the end of the day, they have to prove their worth, right? Fundamentally, they have to prove their worth, but I think they’d be surprised what they would see from partnering with somebody like that.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, definitely. Like what you said, there is definitely a shift that you’re starting to see with farmers, that they are wanting to see more of their data and utilize more of their data, where in the past, there was a lot of resistance and maybe because the market was too flooded. So, what would you tell a farmer who has resistance to working with a precision ag service?

T.J. MASKER: Once, I think I called on a farm for three straight months that was resistant to this, and it wasn’t because they didn’t see the value. It was that this was a piece of their operation that was so important to them that they’d been trying to figure out. And I think one of the things is when you have a group that’s been around for, let’s say, 15-20 years, there’s a lot of value in that versus I might be a little bit more skeptical of somebody that’s only been around a year or two because there’s that track record there. So, what I would think about looking at is who has a track record? Do they have farmers that are willing to talk to them about why they decided to partner with this person? Because, at the end of the day, we know there’s value in the data, but maybe there’s an opportunity for a farmer to share their story with another farmer that’s a little bit resistant and tell them: ‘Hey, I was exactly where you were at seven years ago, and now the way we do things seven years later is fundamentally different.’ So, I would just be open to having that conversation with others that are finding success in this area and help them along in their journey.

RENEE HANSEN: Well, sometimes, you get in a pattern where you are very comfortable with what you’ve been doing the past years, and you’ve been successful. You’ve been profitable, but there comes a point where there’s a tipping point where your margins are starting to get a lot thinner, and a grower needs to maybe change some practices. And that data can tell you exactly what practices to change.

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, it definitely can. I mean, all these things come flooding back to my head, but you think about some of the marginal areas of your farm that just don’t produce much. We did the math 5-6 years ago, and it said: ‘Hey, if we don’t apply dry fertilizer on these spots, we can save an average of $5 an acre across all the acres.’ And the reason why we weren’t going to apply there is: one, we didn’t expect the return, and two, guess what? When we analyzed the soil test results by those areas, they were, a lot of times, the highest soil test values, which, if you back away from it, makes a ton of sense. Because if you’re applying the same rate of fertilizer across the field, and the good parts are taking off more, you’re going to see these lower-yielding spots, for example, have higher soil tests. So, you start to tell that story, and all of a sudden, you’re like: ‘Wow, just by doing that one thing, I’ve saved $5 an acre across all my acres.’ I don’t know what fertilizer prices are at today. Normally, I’d have a better pulse on it, but it might be higher. It might be $6-$7. I don’t know. But you start to approach things from that standpoint and manage each field like it’s its own kind of factory. I know there’s that analogy out there, but it really does make sense when you start to look at it at that level.

RENEE HANSEN: And a lot of companies are talking about data science and machine learning, and they’re trendy words. I don’t want farmers to get afraid of companies starting to use this because if they are resistant to using precision ag, they’re going to think: ‘Oh, well, now they’re just turning this into something that’s more automated.’ So, what do you think companies mean, and what should a farmer know about data science and machine learning within the precision ag space?

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, so companies are investing a lot of money into data science, and it’s an ability to take a lot of the data we have and try to learn really quickly. Versus a traditional method would be: ‘I’m going to evaluate this year’s crop. Then, I’m going to go around and, then, implement three practices that I learned from this year’s crop.’ Versus: ‘Hey, could we speed this up through data science and machine learning and try to learn from 15 crops and apply that knowledge to one year?’ What I will tell you is that most farms that I’ve worked with, and I still believe this to be the case today, is that they want to learn from the data on their own farm, but that also means that they can leverage data science on their own farm. So, the way I would think about it is to think about trials that you’re running. How are you setting them up? Because that truly is data science in its very, very simplistic form, but that’s what it is. We’re trying to test and validate things and use the data. Another trend, like with machine learning, is you’re going to hear more and more about ‘combine automation,’ which is real. I think I was listening to a podcast the other week about how they go out to a farm and demonstrate this to a farmer. Because most people would say: ‘Hey, I know I can adjust the settings on my combine better than any computer can.’ So, one of the things they do is they completely purposely set the settings wrong on the combine for one pass, push the button and watch it adjust. And they watch the farmers’ eyes light up with how quickly and how accurate those adjustments are, and I’ll tell you the tech side of things. As I’ve been talking to farmers specifically about equipment, the tech side of things is tying more and more into that equipment-buying decision. So, what technology are you using? Who’s the provider, whether it be John Deere or Case, or what’s the system that’s going to manage it? And they’re starting to talk more about making decisions for new combines based on automation, which is machine learning which taught that. I think you saw some announcements from John Deere in the last two weeks with the See & Spray technology with the acquisition of Blue River. So, this stuff is going to keep coming, and it’s going to come pretty fast. But at the end of the day, it’s just like a trial on the farm, where seeing is believing. And I think once you see this technology in the hands of different people, you’re going to see people adopt it at different rates, but I’m pretty bullish on the ‘combine automation’ stuff just because of what I’ve seen and what it can do. And I know, from direct feedback from 50-plus farmers over the last four weeks, that is something that they’re looking at.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, it’s pretty incredible, the advancements that they’re making within the technology, just with the tractors, the combines. But, then, also kind of going back to that data, too, and data science, where if a grower is anywhat interested in their data, having to layer all of that in a spreadsheet of Excel and having your brain trying to figure it out, it’s just too difficult. Let the computer do the mathematics for you. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of the data science. It’s learning through your data. So, I’m just kind of reiterating what you were saying, T.J. You’ve shared a couple of stories. You shared that you talked with 50 farmers within the last four weeks. What are some of the most successful stories that you have from a farmer using precision ag?

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, I remember this was kind of the fun one and like the best case study that I have. It was that we started working on a problem, and the same thing applies to product management if I’m trying to solve a problem for a farmer. But it’s like: ‘What’s the goal here?’ And it’s like: ‘The goal was to increase soybean yields for this specific farm.’ They couldn’t get above 45 bushels. So, we started to break down the problem and study the group data that we had, to say, okay, well, we haven’t ‘limed’ in five years. Maybe that’s something we could do. Another thing that the farm hadn’t done in five years was try a different seed brand or variety. So, that’s another thing we could do. Another thing they typically did was only fertilized ahead of the corn crop. Okay. So, let’s split up that application. So, we literally picked a field and said: ‘We’re going to kitchen sink it, and we’re going to try everything we can. And we’re going to make sure we have trials set up within the field.’ I think we ended up hitting 75 or 80 bushels per acre, which was almost double what their average was. Now, granted, Mother Nature cooperated and rained when it needed to rain. But the point was we were able to say fungicide meant ‘this.’ A different variety meant ‘this.’ Using lime, dry fertilizer on this part of the field meant ‘this.’ And we literally laddered it up to that number. To me, we can spend a lot of money on inputs and resources, but doing that, and actually just calling it the ‘kitchen sink’ but having our checks in place, fundamentally changed how that farmer grew soybeans moving forward. And we were able to increase the average over a lot of acres, 15 bushels. But if we didn’t identify what the core issue was and start to think about how we strategically implement different tests, we would have never gotten there. And I laugh because the same thing exists in product development, where you’re trying to build things for farmers. It’s like: ‘What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? How do we prove value, and how do we incrementally get there?’ So, whether it’s agronomy or software development or building the next widget for a John Deere tractor, it’s all the same when you break it down. It’s how you solve problems and measure it to make improvements.

RENEE HANSEN: Well, that’s a great success story, and the fact that, just in one year, how much they can learn and then take it to the rest of their operation over the next 3-5-10 years. And the profit that you’re getting out of that service is tremendous. I mean, it’s definitely worth the cost of the service.

T.J. MASKER: Absolutely.

RENEE HANSEN: You mentioned a little bit about where precision ag is going in the future, but where do you think precision ag is in the software space? So, we talked a little bit about automation with tractors and combines, but what about in the software space? Where do you think precision ag is going?

T.J. MASKER: I think it’s going to continue to get ‘smarter,’ which is kind of an annoying tagline, but it’s going to get smarter about how much you’re applying what rate on what date. A lot of this, we’re getting so good at understanding the impact, and we have enough data to understand it. I also think I’m pretty confident — we saw it in a past experience. I see it in the current one. The value of the mobile device and whatever you have with you is going to continue to dominate this space from a software perspective. You think about: ‘I can pull up Climate or the Ops Center on my phone and have an answer really quickly. I want to show my landlord how the field yielded in a second.’ Farmers are going to continue, in my opinion, to demand that the tools they’re using be accessible from anywhere. And so, precision ag, yes, there’s the technology in the cab. Yes, that’s important. But I would argue that this device — the phone, the tablet — probably more so the phone than anything is going to continue to be such a critical piece. It’s how farmers run their business, and they expect to have things on their phone. So, I would think if I’m working with a provider, that is going to be one of my number-one needs, and it’s also going to drive a lot of engagement for that farm, as well, which is critical for any tool you’re trying to use because a farmer’s going to get value out of a lot of things. But having that answer really handy with them whenever they need it is very, very valuable.

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RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, getting your data any time, anywhere, I think, is kind of a little tagline that we use, even with one of our mobile apps that we have within Premier Crop. But I think I agree with you that farmers want it. They want to pull it up, and they want to see it. They need to show it, whether that be the banker or the landlord themselves. So, they’re looking at the field, getting ready to plant, getting ready to harvest. All of the above.

T.J. MASKER: Yeah, and it has to be easy to use, which is such a challenge, right? Because if you talk to the 50 farmers that I’ve talked to, you’re trying to pull out the nuggets that are similar between all of them, but there are always unique use cases. But I think as long as you’re solving for the 90%, you’re going to be well on your way to help the farm make better decisions, which is ultimately everything that we’re about and trying to do.

RENEE HANSEN: Great. Well, thanks, T.J. Thanks so much for joining us today. Really enjoyed all of your knowledge and your experience and sharing on the Premier Podcast.

T.J. MASKER: Awesome. Thank you.

RENEE HANSEN: Thanks for listening to the Premier Podcast, where everything agronomic is economic. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so we can continue to provide the best precision ag and analytic results for you. And to learn more about Premier Crop, visit our blog at premiercrop.com/blog.

Learn more about farm profitability.

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Response to Fungicide: It Varies

You don’t have to look very hard to find chemical manufacturers’ advertisements claiming a significant positive yield response (15, 20, 25+ bu./ac) to using one of their fungicide products. There are many effective products on the market that provide good control and protection against fungal pathogens, but advertisement claims based on ‘average trial data’ aren’t guarantees for your fields. Three critical components (a host, favorable environment, and pathogen) must come together at the same time for a plant disease to thrive. These three components are commonly referred to as the Plant Disease Triangle. Management or alteration of just one of these components prevents or reduces disease severity.

diseaseHost

It’s important to refer back to the Plant Disease Triangle when gauging the need for fungicide application, as well as past local trial results and current crop economic conditions. How do environmental conditions within the field (soil pH, fertility levels, applied nutrients, etc.) affect the vulnerability of the host (corn or soybean plant) as it relates to disease pressures? Is a pH imbalance affecting nutrient uptake, which in turn makes this specific hybrid more susceptible to fungal disease pressure? Does it make sense, economically, to apply fungicide to lower productivity areas within fields? Variability exists in all fields and managing the yield-limiting factors is what will show a yield response come harvest. Agronomy is complex and agronomy is local. Yield response to fungicide fluctuates within each field based on the interactions of many variables, which are all part of the disease triangle. Conducting on-farm fungicide trials generates more agronomic knowledge related to this complex interaction, which improves decision making for future applications.

Being able to use my family’s farm as a ‘testing ground’ makes working with the solutions Premier Crop provides to our partners even more enjoyable. I am able to experience first-hand what many of our partners and advisors put into practice each and every day. Last year I placed a few fungicide Enhanced Learning Blocks (ELBs) in one of our fields to test the effectiveness of a popular fungicide product. An Enhanced Learning Block is a randomized, replicated trial of different rates, products or application timings. ELBs provide a formal testing environment within a field to determine whether or not the treatment had a statistically significant impact on yield.

Trials were setup to be an on/off scenario – 20 gal/ac and 0 gal/ac each replicated 6 times within the trial area (ELB). Two of the ELBs were placed within the same hybrid – one on heavier soil and the other about 800 feet away in lighter soil on a hill. The product was applied at R1 with a Hagie sprayer. Prior to application we had been receiving ample rainfall, so we anticipated potentially higher fungal disease pressure, however that was not the case.

The image below was taken with a drone about one month after application. You can easily see the replicates in the trial area that did not receive any product. Based on the image what do you estimate the yield difference to be between the treated and non-treated rates? What would an imagery solution come up with for a yield difference based off their algorithm calculating yield from NDVI?

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As we were harvesting this field we could see the location of the fungicide trials as we worked towards them. While combining in the trials the difference in plant structure was obvious – the tops of the corn plants in the untreated replicates had all broken off. Both the drone image and visual observations at harvest pointed to a significant yield response to fungicide in both trials.

When I received the Enhanced Learning Block trial report I was a bit surprised with the actual results – visual observations are deceiving! One trial had a 1 bu/a yield response and the other was 8 bu/a. I was expecting at least a 15 bushel difference.

#1 – lower ground, heavier soil.

#2 – higher ground, lighter soil.

Why did the trial results end up this way? I have some ideas, but no definite answers. Likely the yield response shown in the trial on lighter soil was due to the treated plants’ improved ability to withstand late-season moisture stress, which wasn’t a yield-limiting factor in the heavier soil environment. What I do know is that a 1 bu/a response didn’t come close to paying for the product and application costs, and an 8 bu/a response was likely a little better than break-even. Understanding when, where, and to what degree these products work will allow for better utilization (spatial application), ultimately increasing ROI.

Are we going to spatially apply our fungicide next year? Probably not. Are we going to continue to conduct on-farm trials and Enhanced Learning Blocks to learn more about when, where, and how well fungicides work? Definitely. With the power of local agronomic knowledge, I don’t think it will be too long before spatial application of fungicide becomes a normal practice in crop production.

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5 Surprising Things About Ag Technology

Do you remember the 90s? I was an elementary student, probably about 7 when my parents bought our first computer. I remember listening to the dial up tone to get on the internet and play the math video games that my mom had found. I also remember the incessant pop ups that also came with 90s internet. Sometimes, that’s how I feel about precision ag these days. There are a lot of pop ups that are flashy and use all the right buzz words wanting you to ‘pick me, pick me, pick me.’ However, there are several things about precision ag that these companies often leave out of their messaging that can be surprising. 5 of those things that can often surprise people are:

There are no magic algorithms
Achieving higher yields isn’t the best way to measure success
You don’t need to be a data scientist or technology expert to use your data and equipment to its full ability
Hiring an advisor you trust will help you become a more efficient and profitable farmer
You’ve never learned it all

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THERE ARE NO MAGIC ALGORITHMS

There is no such thing as a perfect magic algorithm. Finding the right product placement, rate, or timing is a constant trialing and evaluation cycle. It doesn’t have to be a headache of a process, though. A lot of our machines have rate control capability and trials that can be loaded right into the controller. At Premier Crop, we can automate these trials through what we call Enhanced Learning Blocks. These are randomized and replicated trials that will tell your machine to change rate, turn off, turn on, switch product, and whatever we want to test. Combining the data from the trial itself with weather data, soil samples, and applied fertility, we can start to gather what kind of agronomic environment this trial could be replicated on. They can also be aggregated to allow us to create response curves for products so we don’t question what that perfect rate might be.

ACHIEVING HIGHER YIELDS ISN’T THE BEST WAY TO MEASURE SUCCESS

As we gain better knowledge of product placement, rates, and timing, it is important to ask how we know when we have found success. Higher yield? That’s what many precision ag companies want us to believe. We can circle and map and see if it got us higher yield, but that’s only half of the picture. Agronomics are always important, but our decisions must also be advantageous to our pocketbook.

For example, let’s say this year I ran a potash trial on my field. In this trial, I had 3 different rates across an area of my field that has 280 ppm soil test K values. The rates we ran were 150 units of K, 200 units of K, and 250 units of K. That translates to 250 lbs of potash, 333 lbs of potash, and 417 lbs of potash, respectively. Our yield responses were then 225 bu, 248 bu, and 251 bu, respectively.

We continued to see an increase in each application, but do they all make sense economically for us? Let’s say that potash is $400/ton, application is $8/ac, and we sell our corn for $5/bu. Which is the best rate in these economic conditions? When we increased our potash from 250 to 333, we gained an additional revenue of +$90.33/ac. However, continuing to go from 333 lbs to 417 lbs, only increased our yield by an additional 3 bushels, we actually lost -$9.67/ac. Yield is only part of the picture, we need to take economics into account, too, especially as we move into a fall with extremely high fertilizer prices. Being confident in the input decisions we make eliminates the emotion that comes with seeing prices rise so fast.

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YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A DATA SCIENTIST OR TECHNOLOGY EXPERT TO USE YOUR DATA AND EQUIPMENT TO ITS FULL ABILITY

That was a lot of math we worked through in the last point for only one input decision. But, with the right technology and advisor working alongside you, you don’t need to be a math, tech, or data guru to make these decisions every single day. It’s important for you and your advisor to sit down and decide what your goals are moving into the next crop year. From there, determine what you could trial for the coming year. Question whether or not you can still push your fertility and see a return. Or consider backing down your seed in lower productivity areas without sacrificing yield. Perhaps you want to know if that starter rate you’ve been using is doing your crop any good.

HIRING AN ADVISOR YOU TRUST WILL HELP YOU BECOME A MORE EFFICIENT AND PROFITABLE FARMER

Having a trusted advisor help you along the way is a huge asset to your farm operation. Agronomy is complex, but using a software that can combine agronomic factors and delve into the relationships happening in your fields through trialing, customized rec equations for different parts of your field, or visuals of your economic and agronomic data married together can take your operation to the next level. Also, having an advisor that isn’t tied to certain products can increase your level of trust, because their number one goal is to make you a better farmer. Going forward, you’re going to want to have a data partner you can rely on to provide confident, unbiased advice in order for you to achieve higher profitability.

YOU’VE NEVER LEARNED IT ALL

The last surprising thing a lot of people don’t realize when they jump into the precision ag world is that there is never going to be a time we have all the answers. I had a grower last winter ask me, “I can see the immediate benefit of doing business with you but what is my long-term gain?” That is such a great question because it allowed us time to talk about expectations. For years, our founder Dan Frieberg has talked about the rain barrel, and finding the lowest stave that may be hindering your yield. But we often forget that once we have raised that stave, another becomes the lowest. This is a continuous process that we work on with you. There is always some way to improve yield, ROI, or efficiency. We are here to help you find it. Contact us today to get started.

Ag technology data driven decisions precision ag variable rate