Tag: data analytics

Share Your Farm Data?

It’s hard to avoid hearing about the promise of “big data.” Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations, it is also easy to spin conspiracy theories. There are many big-data analytics examples cited, such as Amazon and Netflix. They suggest books and movies we may enjoy based on what we have “liked” in the past or what other people who seem similar to us like. Google, the National Security Agency and others evidentially collect data bout what we search, what and whom we email, and much more.

There seem to be several “values” from big-data analytics. Many companies’ goals are to monetize data through better value propositions to their customers, like selling advertising, how they position products, differential pricing, etc. Another goal is to reliably predict behavior. For example, Bob shares a common background and behavior as Tim, and Tim likes this brand; therefore, Bob must like it as well.

Reliably predicting behavior, better product value propositions and differential pricing are all examples of how companies could use your agronomic data. For example, your field soils are X, Y, Z and hybrids A, B, C outperformed hybrids Q, R, S on 85% of the X, Y, Z soil; therefore A, B, C is the best possible value proposition for you. That fact that your soils are X, Y, Z is “public knowledge” – because the soils database is public.

But a company might say, ” to really perfect our value proposition, we need your non-public agronomic data. Why don’t you send us your historic yield data, your fertility data, your management information, etc.”

What can it hurt? After all, they only want to help you. The reality is, we all share “our” data with other companies, either intentionally in exchange for a benefit or inadvertently because we wanted a cool app, and sometimes the trade-offs are worth it.

For me, the difference between consumer data sharing and sharing your geo-referenced agronomic data is profound. Your reading choices might influence what advertising you see; your agronomic data is your “business” data. There is nothing anonymous about GPS data.

Anyone with a tractor guidance system has heard about the different levels of GPS accuracy. Any of those accuracies are more than sufficient to provide site-specific data about your fields when you use a documentation system.

For Premier Crop, building a partnership to use data to make better agronomic decisions has always begun with this foundation: the grower owns the data, data is only pooled with permission, and even pooled data belongs to the growers who shared data. But Premier Crop’s history and operating principals don’t mean that’s the right way or the only way to use data to benefit growers.

premiercropoptixgroupdata

Sharing your data with seed, crop protection, nutrient or machinery suppliers can make business sense. These companies sell you products that are important to your business and profitability. Sharing your data to help them provide better recommendations may be well worth any trade-off. Most important is to think through those trade-offs and each partnership proposal.

Got data?

1. What are the partners going to do with the data? Perhaps more importantly – what will they assure you (in writing) they will not do?

2. Some of your partners may be fearful of missing out on the “next big thing” if they provide the wrong answers to your questions. What questions are you asking?

Learn more about data analytics here.

Benefits to Using your Yield Monitor

“You’re capable of using your yield monitor to measure,
do trials and check if your plan actually worked.
It’s so much easier than it used to be.” – Dan Frieberg

RENEE HANSEN: Today, we’re talking with Dan Frieberg, and we’re talking about yield monitors and how Premier Crop can help support a grower while utilizing their yield monitor. Dan, can you just explain a little bit about how growers can notice differences in the field, whether it’s a good spot or a bad spot?

DAN FRIEBERG: What’s happened over the last 22 years, since we’ve been in business, is yield monitors have become really commonplace. Almost every combine now would have a yield monitor, but, Renee, a lot of growers don’t really use them very effectively. It’s almost like some people use it just as a way to measure moisture, to keep track of moisture and direct grain. It’s where the grain is going based on moisture. Somebody else described yield monitors as “Harvest TV.” It’s just something they look at as they go through the field. Renee, I would tell you that every grower has seen 90-bushel beans, and every grower has seen upward to 250-bushel to 300-bushel corn in some part of the field. They’ve seen those numbers flash in good years. They’ve seen those numbers flash on the yield monitor. And, for me, if I’m a grower, what I want to do is, if I had the time — I mean, if it weren’t so rushed in harvest — I would love to stop the combine and figure out what in the world is going on in that part of the field. What makes that part of the field so much more productive than the rest of the field?

When they go through the really low-yielding parts of the field, generally, they have an idea already. They remember the growing season. They saw that area. It had weed escapes, or it was moisture-stressed. So, a lot of times, they know because of soil differences. They know the lower-yielding areas. Sometimes, though, with the super high-yielding areas, they’re unsure. They know their sweet spots in the field, but they don’t know what makes them a sweet spot. So, one of the foundation pieces that we like to do with yield monitor data is just put that data file, the yield monitor data file, together with a whole bunch of other layers of data and really try to help the grower see the differences in the field beyond. The yield monitor tells a story, but you really don’t get the complete story until you combine it with the rest of the data. So, for us, it’s a big foundational piece, but a lot of growers aren’t using their yield data. I think it’s just because nobody’s ever led them to understand how they could use it, all the different ways they could use the yield data to their advantage.

RENEE HANSEN: I was riding in the tractor earlier this fall with my husband, and his dad was running the combine. His dad was seeing 90-bushel beans, and the field actually ended up doing record-high soybean yield in his lifetime. And he’s 73, and he’s never seen beans that high. And so, you mentioned you would want to stop. What would you do if you weren’t so rushed? What would you do to stop and look at, when seeing the yield monitor hit 90 in beans?

premiercrop in the tractor

DAN FRIEBERG: For me, Renee, a lot of times, it’s what’s below ground. I want to know what is different about that area. And, most of the time, that difference is underground. It’s a combination of what you might learn off of a soil test. It could be soil-type related. Sometimes, it’s really hard to understand. What we try to do, though, is identify those consistently high-yielding spots. Year after year, there’s something about that area. A lot of times, Renee, the topsoil is deep there. What’s called the A horizon, the very first layer of topsoil, that is really deep there. The reason I know that is because, in a dry year, they have enough topsoil that they have enough water holding capacity in that area of field to carry it through a dry year. They also tend to be well-drained because, in a wet year, the water is not going to stand there. So, they’re well-drained because of natural slope, or they’re well-drained because of soil structure. Or they could be well-drained because of tile, but they tend to be well-drained, as well. So, I automatically know those two pieces usually fit together. In those areas, you’re not hitting the clay layer right away. You have enough topsoil to carry it through the dry year.

For us, those areas just beg. They beg to be managed more aggressively. There’s a lot of growers who — just in general, we climb, in yield, a couple of bushels on corn, maybe a bushel on soybeans. Just nationally, we tend to be on this upward trend over the last 20 years. We try to talk to growers about how, if you’re going to take the next leap, if your farm average — let’s say your farm average on soybeans this year is 65, and you want to move your farm average to consistently above 70, don’t the best areas of your field have to get in the 90-bushel range? If you’re going to climb five bushel across your entire operation, I’m guessing the best areas have to do more than five bushel because the worst areas, they may be maxed out already. So, climbing up, being able to continue to climb overall yields, it probably means the best areas have to do even better. We just love to use the yield file as a way to quantify those areas. And then those become areas that we’re just much more aggressive, much more aggressive with everything, to try to take them to that next yield plateau.

RENEE HANSEN: You also mentioned utilizing more than just this year of yield files and using more historic yield to layer more years of yield and data. So, why would that be so beneficial to utilize your yield monitor, to continue to put in all these years of data? Because the grower already has it, they have years and years of data, probably on a jump drive or maybe in the monitor. What can they do to utilize all of those years, and how easy is it to get it into a system like Premier Crop?

DAN FRIEBERG: We try to make it as easy as possible. We love to grab that historic yield data. If there’s one piece of data that growers have a lot of, a lot of times, it’s historic yield data, and it’s exactly like you just described. It’s on thumb drives in a desk drawer. Who knows where it is, but the grower knows. It could be in a Ziploc bag, and it’s just a combination of all these different devices they’ve had over the years. But we just love to grab it because it starts to let you see spatial differences, differences within the field and consistent differences. If you have more than one year, the reason you want to look at more than one year is just to be able to see consistency over different weather patterns.

There are always outliers in data. Yield files aren’t perfect because there can be man-made differences in a yield file, meaning, for example, you could have a hybrid or variety change that creates an artificial. Like one variety fell out of bed and just didn’t do well, and that area of the field looks bad, but it had nothing to do with the area of the field. It had everything to do with the genetic issue. There’s always an outlier, so the more years of yield data, the more you can sort out the outliers. You can sort out the year that had the windstorm or the year that had the hail event or whatever. It lets you have more — the more years, the more confidence.

premier crop actual yield history

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, you make a great point, too, that it’s not only about the yield monitor, but it’s also about what you can visually see. Can you talk about a little bit of the myths of the yield monitor? I feel like some growers just may not trust what is coming off of their yield data.

DAN FRIEBERG: I say all the time, if I’m a grower, and I’m 10 years into this yield monitor thing, and I’ve never used my yield data to make a decision, pretty soon I quit caring. Why would I calibrate my yield monitor when I’ve never used it? I mean, I’ve never really used it.

RENEE HANSEN: It’s like not having a score at a sporting event, like who’s going to care who scores next if you can’t see the scoreboard? Nobody knows. You need that score.

DAN FRIEBERG: That’s where we’re at. What we find is that the same grower who hasn’t cared about calibrating their yield data, once we start working with them, and they actually start seeing why it matters, then, all of a sudden, they care a lot. And then they calibrate, and then they really do pay attention. Then, Renee, it almost is like the switch goes on, and then they want everything to be perfect. If the grain cart scale says that field did 83 bushels, they expect us to adjust the yield file to an average of 83 because that’s what the grain cart scale said. Once they start actually using the yield monitor to make decisions, then they care a lot about data quality, and data quality is a big deal to us. It’s just getting it right, getting all pieces of it right. Making sure that everything is right is a big deal. So, yield monitors, once they start understanding that, then one of the things that I love is, with yield monitors, we’ve entered this era. It’s no longer: “Trust me, this works.” If you’re a grower, you get sold a lot of stuff. Somebody is always driving up the driveway to sell you stuff. It’s different hybrids or varieties. It’s different crop protection plans. It’s nutrients. It’s additives. It’s micronutrients. It’s biologicals. It never ends. It’s always this one — here’s the next thing that’s going to be this magic bullet.

And now, because of a yield monitor, you don’t have to just trust that it works. You can actually do trials in your own fields. One of our sayings is: “Growers say local data is best, but you can’t get more local than my fields.” And that’s what you’re capable of doing now. You’re capable of using your yield monitor to measure, to do trials and measure whether each of those things actually worked. It’s so much easier than it used to be. I grew up in the day of weigh wagons, where you’d go measure out a strip in the field and grab a weigh wagon comparison. That was the early years, but now it’s just so easy to do the same thing at the speed of farming.

RENEE HANSEN: You said that was the early years of weigh wagons. I don’t feel like I’m that old, Dan, and I feel like we were just using them 20 years ago. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, hauling them around in the pickup. But you also talked about it with yield monitors. And, like I said, my husband, when we were farming his field, his overall field had a record soybean yield. But why is it so important to not look at the whole field average and look deeper? I mean, you talked about it a little bit before in those parts of the fields, and I feel like that’s where Premier Crop really differentiates itself.

DAN FRIEBERG: Growers are seeing really huge swings between fields, right? So, one field does really great, and another field doesn’t. You can start to use your data to sort out why, but, even within fields, within a field, most of the time, there are just pretty dramatic differences. Another way we use the yield file is we use the yield file as part of future nutrient applications. You can calculate nutrient removal off the yield file and build that in. It’s not the sole — we’re not talking about using the yield file as the only source of how you do nutrients, but it can be another layer of data. And growers are really in tune with this. You’re putting back what you took off, right? If you use the yield file, instead of treating the whole field — like if you know the field average was 85 bushel of soybeans, instead of just putting back removal for 85 bushels on every acre, using the yield file, some of the field will get 60-bushel removals, and another part of the field will get 100-bushel removals. That’s really important because those high-yielding areas are removing more nutrients. And so, you need to be able to capture that in some way to make sure that you keep pace with just how much they’re removing.

RENEE HANSEN: Because, ultimately, that helps them profit more because they’re applying nutrients in parts of the field where they need to apply them more and less, therefore, generating consistently higher yields. Like you said, what was the percentage year over year?

DAN FRIEBERG: What we try to do is we try to put people on a steeper curve, a steeper improvement curve. Across U.S. agriculture, we continually step up yields every year, on average, if you do a trend line, which is what economists do: the trend-line yield. There are ups and downs within the trend line, but the trend line might be two bushel per acre per year on corn, or three bushel per acre per year on corn. And we’re just trying to be on a steeper trend line. We’re trying to use data. Instead of two-and-a-half bushels per acre per year, can we make it a consistent six bushels per acre per year? And really, Renee, it’s not about higher yields. It’s about higher profit. Yields are a huge piece of that. It’s hard to improve profitability without doing better, yield-wise. It’s all with an eye for what you just said. It’s just about investing every input dollar within the field to try to get a higher return.

premier crop yield monitor

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, try to get a higher return with what they already have, with what growers already have. With what I have, I need to make more. I need to profit. I need to make more margin. Utilizing that yield monitor a little bit more than just, like you said, watching it throughout the field can really be beneficial to a grower’s operation.

DAN FRIEBERG: Renee, I know not everybody is wired the same, but I’m a big “why.” I always want to know “why.” Like when I see differences, I want to know what can explain the differences. For me, that “why” question is not — you can say, well, it’s mother nature, but it’s like, no. No, mother nature affected the entire field the same, but there’s some reason why parts of the field are better and parts of the field are worse. The quicker we can define “why,” or the better we can understand “why,” if we can, then that leads us to be able to develop a plan on how to do it better. We talk all the time about “we.” What we do is we analyze. We analyze data, and then we turn that into advice. And then we act on the advice the next crop year. It’s this constant cycle of driving for improvement.

RENEE HANSEN: Well, thanks, Dan. In closing, what would you say to a grower who isn’t utilizing some kind of system like Premier Crop with their yield data? What would you say to them?

DAN FRIEBERG: Don’t give up. I mean, some people, they literally are giving up, or they’re cynical or whatever. I would say it’s never too late to get started, obviously, and your yield files can be eye-opening in a way to do better. They’re a foundation piece to do better.

RENEE HANSEN: There’s always an entry point to get started and, sometimes, it’s just taking that first leap. 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.

data analytics farm analytics Farm technology farming yield efficiency

Three ways to Use Data to Be More Profitable

If I asked you if you had a budget, you would most likely tell me you did. If I asked you where you could skim your budget in order to save more for your child’s education, a new truck or a vacation, you most likely wouldn’t know where to start. I know I wouldn’t!

This is really no different than farming. If you don’t have it written out, in detail, with all of your expenses and projected income, would you know where to start to be able to be more profitable?

First, you have to figure out what your profitability is throughout the field. You can do this by adding up all of your inputs on your field (flat rated & variable rated) and adding those costs appropriately. When I say appropriately, I mean making sure that variable rates are accounted for.

Next, you have your income from your crop to add to the equation. But, your yield map is variable, so your cost of production is variable. See where I’m going with this?

Using your data to create a profitability map, like this one, can identify those areas.

cost per yield map

Think about this number: If 10% of your fields are losing money and let’s hypothetically say they are losing you an average of $2.00/bushel, that equates to some serious money loss when you scale it across your entire operation!

But, as my brother asked me once about our own family’s field when I showed him our home field’s profitability map, “That’s great, Katie, but what do you do with this map?” Using the data and the technology that a grower has available to them, that’s when the magic happens.

HERE ARE THREE WAYS A GROWER CAN USE DATA TO BE MORE PROFITABLE

1. STOP TREATING ALL FIELDS THE SAME.

They don’t all produce the same, so why should they have the same yield goals?

2. DEVELOP A PLAN TO SPATIALLY MANAGE YOUR INPUTS WITHIN EACH OF YOUR FIELDS.

You don’t have to have all the latest and greatest technology. But you can use your data to help you improve your profitability within your operation. Your trusted advisor should be able to help you with this if you are unsure.

If we look at this example, these areas in red only removed off a portion of the nutrients that areas in green did.

premier crop nutrient removal rates

premiercrop_nutrientsremoved

Let’s give a hypothetical example: If we use $310 for the price of MAP and Potash, the difference in dollars removed is $5.20 and $6.30/acre, respectively. We could use this information to make sure that our nutrient application accounts for these values in order to spend our nutrient dollars efficiently. We’re all looking for ways to maximize every dollar and ensure that it returns us the most amount of profit.

3. USE YOUR DATA TO MAKE DECISIONS FOR THE NEXT CROP SEASON.

This requires you to listen to what the data is telling you. Using your data provides you the facts you need to make more profitable decisions.

We were led to believe that the Precision Ag technology could make us money or save us money. However, it’s the DATA that we use in combination with the technology that enables you to be more profitable.

Changing your outcome is only possible when you do things differently than what’s been comfortable. But, just like your own budget, knowing where to change is essential. Your trusted advisor is by your side to help you make these essential decisions and improve your overall farm profitability.

data analytics data driven decisions farm finance nutrient removals precision ag yield analysis yield efficiency

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.

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What Does a Year End Meeting Look Like with a Premier Crop Partner?

“We use SciMax Solutions, a Premier Crop partner,
to push everything we can
in order to get the best ROI
and try to do the best job that we can.”
– Mike Myers, Waukee, IA

PETER BIXEL: I’m Peter Bixel, SciMax Team Leader, and today we’re working with two of our clients, down here close to Des Moines, Iowa: Dale Meyer and Michael Myers. And I’ve been looking at their information, reviewing 2020 data this year and planning for 2021.

MIKE MYERS: I’ve been working with Peter and SciMax for, I think, around seven years, something like that. Time flies. I work with SciMax to help push us to the next level. It’s a really good precision ag database that they have, and adding VRT into our operation was a big part of that, using our yield data and going into our management zones and pushing the best acres as far as we can. We haven’t pushed them as far as we can yet, and that’s the goal for the future. It’s to push everything we can in order to get the best ROI and try to do the best job that we can.

DALE MEYER: Before that, we were doing zone management for fertility by soil type. I mean, there was soil sampling, but it was, more or less, by the lay of the land and soil type. With the local co-op, we went to larger five-to-seven acre grids. They would spread it by areas, more or less, not necessarily by GPS but by a map.

Farm data for ROI

MIKE MYERS: Our precision ag and farm data was pretty rustic, overall. You just kind of guess where you were in the field. The biggest thing that helped us change was implementing yield data. As soon as we started picking that up, we needed something to do with it. Otherwise, what’s the point of getting it? Peter did a talk with Latham that made a lot of sense to us, that we could compile the yield data with our fertility, soil sampling, soil types, etc. And the biggest thing that he’s helped us with is to realize where we’re lacking, where we’re putting too much fertilizer on. I mean, it’s not a coincidence that our best yields have been over the past few years using SciMax’s precision ag tools. Now, you have to have the weather to do that, but without SciMax’s help, we wouldn’t have averaged 240 as a farm average last year on corn. It probably would have been 210, 220, like your average farmer in the area would have been. But with us doing the extra things and managing better with their help, we were able to get more return. More or less, we’re not at the beginning of this, but we’re starting to take the steps that’ll start pushing us even higher, I think. It’s not something in that we implemented everything right away, but we’re implementing some things more and more every year. We’re trying to build our soils on fertility-level more this year than we have in the past. And looking at the farm data he gave us today, I mean, if we continue the trend of what the farm data is saying, then that should pay off. Peter’s a really good guy to work with, too. There are other people that offer precision ag or something like it, but Peter’s the thing that kind of puts that all together, as far as SciMax marrying with Premier Crop and then bringing that to us. If he was a different person, I don’t know if we’d still be with them or not. I don’t know, but he’s keeping us for sure.

DALE MEYER: I think it’s safe to say that the majority of the farmers of my generation operated on a status quo thing up to a point. Then, the yield monitors came in to where we could see: “Oh, wow. I never realized that the wet spot was affected so much by the excess water.” So, a lot of tiling has happened because of that, and then, also, the fertility side with different soil types. In parts of the field that are high yielding, we were pulling a lot more nutrients off than we thought. I guess, maybe, we just didn’t even think. Precision ag kind of sharpened everything because you didn’t really know the advent of the yield monitor, as well as grid sampling and other things. Hybrids have improved, there’s no question about that, but, all in all, we’re doing a better job. We’re doing a better job of planting, as far as placement, depth and spacing, but particularly depth, or emergence at the same time. It’s easy for the seed companies to take a lot of credit, and they deserve a lot of credit, but the farm equipment’s and farm data management changed this picture a lot, too.

PETER BIXEL: Well, I think, studying the hybrids and placing them where they need to go makes a big difference, too. Before, maybe, if you were my partner, you just buy: “Yep, these three are good.” The dealer sold them to him. Where did you plant them? “It didn’t matter. You just plant them wherever you want.” No, there is a difference. You know that, Michael.

MIKE MYERS: Yeah, I guess for me, as far as all this, it’s all that I mentioned a little bit. Getting yield maps gives you a picture of what happened that year, and then making that into managing the zones, that shows us what has happened over many years. I mean we have a memory, but we don’t have a the farm data memory where we can go back and say: “Okay, this area of the field did this, and, on average, it’s kind of been a B area. Or it’s a C area or an A.” We can break that down, and then we can also look at the fact, and I mentioned it too, as far as fertilizer, where: “Okay, what did the field make? Did it do 200? Okay, we’ll put a flat rate of crop removal of 200 across the whole field.” Well, that’s not the truth. The truth is that the poor areas did 160, the medium areas did 200 and the high areas did 240. I mean, it varies, right? But that’s kind of the idea. I, over the past several years, have really been putting a lot of thought to the fact that I would really like to see what our yields would be today if we would’ve started doing precision ag and variable-rate fertilizer five years ago because what we’ve been doing is taking off 240-bushel corn on a good area and putting 200 bushels of nutrients back on. So, we’re stealing away from our good areas and adding to our poor areas. In those poor areas, you’re never going to yield what the good areas are going to do. So, we can better utilize our money as far as our investment into fertilizer, and then that should pay dividends in ROI and harvest time, too. That’s one of the biggest things, I would say.

PETER BIXEL: Their retailer in the past wasn’t able to really do the field history either, so now they’ve made a big change and adjusted things. Including adding strip-till.

CREATING NEW MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FROM FARM DATA

PETER BIXEL: We’ve come up with tissue sample ranges by stage for corn and soybeans on each nutrient. So, this is that line, and then, basically, it’s just the group average zone, all we did overall here. You’ll get yours with this graph, and then we’ll always plot their individual data on here. It’s kind of interesting. I mean, we’re pretty close to the limit. We tracked pretty close on nitrogen. Really, we weren’t that far off comparatively.

MIKE MYERS: I’d like to see the guys that did the KTS. Can we group that data and look at it?

PETER BIXEL: Yeah.

MIKE MYERS: Our application was right at V5, V6. So, we gained more stalk, but where is manganese?

PETER BIXEL: Right here. (pointing to the field map on the computer)

MIKE MYERS: My manganese went through the roof, like right in there. I put it in with the KTS. Then I put that Versa Max, and that’s got manganese in it, and I took my manganese levels from like 80 to 100 clear up into 140s, and they stuck around until probably V10. I graphed it all out myself. Let me grab it. I think I got a pamphlet right here.

Using precision ag to look at tissue sample data

TISSUE SAMPLING

PETER BIXEL: Well, we’re trying to define trends for just seeing what the plants are telling us. It’s no different than a blood test, which you could say: “Well, that’s overkill.” Yeah, but the plants, the weather and everything change so much every stage, depending on the growing season. Like there in the middle of May, we didn’t hardly gain any GDUs for like two or three weeks because it was just cloudy and cool. Then, we took off, and we were growing like two stages from V4 to V6 in five days. The nutrients change by that stage. It’s kind of a way to gauge where the plants are at. Michael’s been pulling two different farms, and you pull in an A zone and just kind of track and see what they’re telling us. Not everybody, but the majority of us, will go, and apply what we feel the plant needs. Then, like he’s looking now to see: “Okay, if we applied zinc and manganese right before this tissue sample, and we applied it and we came back a week later, did we see the uptake?” Did the plant tell us they got it? Like my zinc and manganese, I think it took like about two weeks, two sampling times, for it to really uptake. For my potassium, I’ve got to look back. I can’t remember this off the top of my head. I think it took about three weeks because potassium is mobile. It takes water to get it down the soil. We didn’t have a whole lot of moisture, obviously, but Michael and I Y-dropped to put it next to the row so it would hopefully get in faster.

MIKE MYERS: Yeah, I just remember on the home farm, on the treatment out here, that the manganese just went through the roof. So, I know I can raise those loads.

PETER BIXEL: Manganese has been one that we’ve kind of struggled with, especially later on, but this year. I think some of it was due to the dryness, too. We didn’t have as much water as the last two years. So, it wasn’t flushing it through this profile. We were able to keep reasonable. The black line is where we want to be at, and you can see that. You got the polynomial or you got just the average of the polynomial for our group, and so we were able to stay a little bit better on that. The other thing, to me, that was pretty interesting was how boron’s been. If you look at the past years, we’ve been just horrible. We just tanked on boron. We would never come back up to where we’d like to be at but this year. Some of this, too, I believe, is we’re getting a lot more guys that are throwing boron in with their fungicide. Not everything, but some of that’s been helping bring those levels, I feel as a group, at least, up. We stayed pretty good, and the reason I think we stayed good on boron is that it’s mobile. We didn’t have rain. We didn’t continuously keep flushing that deeper and deeper in the profile. I think we’ll talk and see what everybody thinks next week. We can quit at like V10, V12, just because nobody’s been significantly doing anything different after that point.

PETER BIXEL: I know it would have because look at what you did last year. So, Michael and Dale, they’ve been doing some different stuff last year. It definitely showed, I think, good stuff for all your treatment, boron and zinc already, and things like that. I guess it kind of tells me they weren’t, I wouldn’t say, normal conditions. They had more rain than you but not normal. I guess that just tells me that we’re still going to keep playing, but we also learned our normal standard practices. It’s probably still a benefit if you’ve got that one limiting factor, whatever that is. It’s potassium in their case. He said it was like 130 to 140 parts per million. Spend the money on it. Get the foundation built. Then, you can start to worry about wider operation or extra phosphorus.

MIKE MYERS: It just goes back to that. Every time we plant a seed, it’s got its maximum potential, and as the season goes on, that lowers, lowers and lowers. Well, with potassium, and I’ve thought about this a decent amount, it’s more important than about every of the other major ones earlier. Maybe phosphorus is there, too, but as far as potassium, most of its uptake is V6 to 12-ish. Phosphorus, sulfur and, obviously, nitrogen are all after that. So, which of the four biggest nutrients is going to pull our potential down the most in that first, until V8? Well, it’s probably potassium. So, if we don’t have potassium there, that potential is already capped.

PETER BIXEL: Correct. You can put on as much nitrogen as you want if you think it’s efficient, like you said. After that fact, it doesn’t matter because K has got to be there to move it up in the plant. When you grid sampled and then started doing the strip, I think it’s good, especially with what we’re doing and trying to build the 250 and stuff that we’re doing on the farms and using the management zones. I’m trying to continue to build that. On your beans this year, with new soil sample data, which is not the best year in yields and stuff like that, you were at 144 parts per million of potassium, and you went to 176. Pretty steady increase and a direct correlation. We saw that, yeah, you went from 27 bushels to 57, a 30-bushel acre advantage.

MIKE MYERS: On just a 30 parts per million difference.

PETER BIXEL: Correct. So, I think as we sample some other farms — I don’t think everything got sampled. I can’t remember the majority of stuff, but as we get the new stuff on the rest of the farms, it’ll be interesting to see. That was something I pointed out where, like you said, potassium, and we see this with a lot of clients, at 22 to 26. Not really a huge correlation.

CORN ON CORN FARM DATA

MIKE MYERS: I was really impressed with how I did this fall corn on corn over here, and we vertical tilled at first. Well, we did that, so we could put anhydrous on.

PETER BIXEL: How deep did you do the vertical till?

DALE MEYER: Through May, three to four inches.

PETER BIXEL: How deep was the strip-till in?

MIKE MYERS: About four to five. It can go six, just depends.

PETER BIXEL: That’s why I don’t think our lows aren’t as low. Maybe that’s some of the genetics or fertility, things like that, too.

MIKE MYERS: We’ve mentioned we have more potential on all of our corn going into July, except our corn-on-corn. It’s awful. Yeah, there’s a pond right there.

PETER BIXEL: Our corn-on-corn, for the group, averaged 165. Our first-year corn was 190. So, that tells you that we haven’t seen that big of a spread between those two for a lot of years.

DALE MEYER: We’ve not had this consistent-looking crop at harvest time on corn-on-corn ever, that I can remember.

MIKE MYERS: As far as spacing and the beans being there.

DALE MEYER: We had a good growing season, but that all started when it came up.

PETER BIXEL: Well, we didn’t have a lot of wet feet in great conditions, like you said, to come out on soil. You only had nine inches. With the weather Premier grabs, nine inches of rain is all I had. This area is definitely the lowest.

MIKE MYERS: Probably over half of that came before July 1st.

PETER BIXEL: It came before June. He keeps track of some calendars. He’d have every rainfall.

DALE MEYER: The people that run the auction over here at Guthrie Center, what did he tell him?

MIKE MYERS: He was worse yet. What was it?

DALE MEYER: They only had a couple of inches all summer.

MIKE MYERS: We had about an inch, an inch and a quarter in July, and then about the same in June. They didn’t even get an inch in either of them.

Make sure to listen 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.

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Improving Farm Efficiency with Nutrient Planning

Our approach to nutrient planning is based on the fact that we want to allow our advisors, partners, and growers to get ahead when it comes to planning for the next crop season. Some advisors are having this conversation early, even before growers start combining in the fall. As we dial our focus on helping growers create a plan before the growing season begins, we look at several things. Using a spatial soil sample as one of the foundation pieces is a large part of what we do. A spatial soil sample could be a grid sample where the field is divided into smaller sizes, giving you a number of samples within a field, two-and-a-half-acre grids are common in most areas. In other areas where the field is divided into zones, zone sampling can be driven by soils, historic imagery, or EC conductivity. Instead of capturing one sample for an entire field, they’re capturing more intense, site-specific samples. Layering all these samples into one computerized system and letting data science derive the factors for you helps, rather than trying to figure it out on your own in those frustrating excel sheets.

Soil Layers-01

We understand that with all nutrients, a combination of soil-supplied nutrients and the soil foundation feeds the crop. This means there are nutrients in the soil that are released to balance what the soil supplies to the crop versus what a farmer applies with manure or commercial fertilizer. But we don’t stop with only the soil sample and management zones. Another piece of what we do is use yield files to capture the actual nutrient removal rates. A farmer is capturing yield data every second they go across the field and we are able to calculate the phosphorus and potassium removal off the yield file. Not many other companies do this, because it can be difficult to export the yield file from the growers system. We believe this is the differentiating factor that leads to better yield efficiency and maximizing profits.

We then divide fields by productivity level because we believe we’re able to define some areas of the field that respond to more nutrients. We generally have a different equation for each productivity area within a field. Other companies will go to the grower with three different equations priced out with nutrients and have the grower choose just one. We believe this shouldn’t be a “one size fits all” approach, though. A grower shouldn’t have to choose aggressive versus conservative for the whole field. Having more complex equations is a big part of what we do, and this is why we believe you can treat parts of the field aggressively and parts of the field more conservatively. It makes sense to us that some areas of the field just respond more to nutrients than other areas of the field, and we want to take advantage of that. Again, this is another example of how we use our data science to calculate all the layers of data to create a customized prescription for your field. We are also able to test right rate technology using our Enhanced Learning Blocks®, using statical confidence to prove the best rates in the field.

data science farm trials

When you think about the rate of nutrients that should be applied, how do you make your final decision? You know that agronomy is local, meaning it is important when giving site-specific recommendations, to pay attention to every field, specifically each different productivity area within each field. This makes it important to create unique prescriptions by putting trials in growers’ fields. It really doesn’t get more local than using your own fields. These trials are scientific trials within each part of each grower’s fields, using analytics and data science to inform our recommendations. Each trial has replications of different rates in different areas of a grower’s field to statically understand where in a field the best rates win.

The goal is to produce yields efficiently and profit as much as possible. When we go into areas where a grower hasn’t been soil sampling or doing variable rate nutrient applications, we typically find that the lowest fertility areas are the highest yielding. These low fertility areas come to be because the high-yield areas have mined down the nutrients from the field being treated uniformly. Growers will tell us, “I put the same blend on every acre, and I’ve done it for the last 10 years.” However, the problem is that they haven’t been removing nutrients as uniformly as they’ve been applying them. Those consistently high-yield areas have pulled down nutrients, and the consistently low-yield areas have allowed nutrients to build up in the soil. We capture that when soil sampling, which can be a foundational piece. We also find the areas that are consistently higher yielding are hard to keep up with. The more that certain nutrients are applied, the better the yield. We never try to even out the field and make it one color on a soil test map. The question we ask ourselves is, “How do we generate more dollar return for every dollar we invest within those areas of the field?” If we never catch up soil test-wise, it means we keep producing better and better yields as efficiently as possible. It’s not uncommon for us to see 80 to 100 dollar-an-acre swings by single nutrients.

Screen Shot 2021-01-28 at 2.11.44 PM Nutrient Planning-01-3

When growers realize there are that many dollars in play, it leads them to want to do better. We’re constantly surprised at how much yield response we’re seeing by being ultra-aggressive and applying a high rate. We’re just beginning to understand and to tap into what’s possible.

If you’re interested in taking a step towards highly analytical planning for the crop year, contact us today. For more information about nutrient planning, check out our precision ag conversations on the Premier Podcast.

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What Can You Do With Your Farm Data?

“We know there are dollars left on the table on every acre, it’s just a matter of finding it with your farm data.” – Lance Meyer, Kansas

LANCE MEYER: Hi, guys. My name is Lance Meyer. I’m an advisor here in eastern Kansas, actually located in the little town of Wellsville, just southwest of Kansas City. I’ve been with Premier Crop for about a year and a half now, and I work with growers kind of all over Kansas. I’m mainly focused here in east-central Kansas, but I get out west and up north a little bit, so kind of all over.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, and Lance, where did you go to school?

LANCE MEYER: Of course, K-State. I mean, is there any other school? I think I’m the only K-State grad with Premier Crop right now, so it makes me feel pretty good. I went to K-State, did ag technology there, minored in agronomy and ag business. With Premier Crop, now I’m doing what I love and pretty much exactly what I went to school for. It’s going great.

RENEE HANSEN: Today, we’re talking with Lance about the “why” behind your field map and how data and agronomic data can really help you move forward and help you be more profitable in the years to come. So, Lance, I’m just going to ask you some questions. Just tell me a little bit about what you have seen within the last year and a half while at Premier Crop, or even when you were in school, noticing different spots in the field through data. Can you explain that a little bit more?

LANCE MEYER: Well, first of all, it’s great that people are recognizing that there are these spots in the field. In precision ag, at Premier Crop, we call that variability, and that’s ultimately our main goal. It’s to manage that variability, and Premier Crop has a bunch of different tools. Some examples that a grower might see differences in soil fertility: that could be organic matter, pH or just your soil-supplied nutrients. That’s really different all over Kansas. That’s one great thing about Kansas. You get kind of the whole diverse picture. So, in eastern Kansas, we could deal with some pretty acidic soils, and then, as you move farther west, you get into some really high-pH environments. So, there are a lot of different things there that are going on. Another thing here in Kansas: as you move farther west, you have historically high potassium in the soil. That’s a couple of things we deal with in Kansas, some other examples: weather also plays a big factor. We have a lot of irrigation out west. There’s some surface water irrigation here in eastern Kansas. Then, you also get into those very drouthy environments out west and a lot of dry-land farming. That can play a big factor in it. Some other things: different genetics are used in hybrids, that sort of thing. Stuff that works here in eastern Kansas is not going to work in western Kansas, in most cases. There are some big differences also in crop protection products. Different hybrids respond to different fungicides. We noticed a lot about that this year, that some hybrids respond greatly to fungicides, and then some not so much. There’s a lot of variability across the state, and that’s one thing that I’m here to help manage and make the best decision for the grower.

RENEE HANSEN: We say, within Premier Crop, that agronomy is local, but farmers say it too because we have this vast information of data within our system. Ranging from Canada, down south to Oklahoma, East to Ohio, all the way to Colorado. And it’s so important that looking at data locally, specifically in Kansas, is so significantly different. What would be the importance for a grower to start using their data when working with you?

LANCE MEYER: Like I talked about, there’s so much variability. Even across the state, but even in each county. Working with growers in eastern Kansas versus western Kansas, I mean, agronomy is completely different, and that’s really what I love about Premier Crop. You don’t have to be an expert on anything because we are using the data, and it’s pretty much screaming at us, telling us what we need to do. The Premier Crop software is really a big part of that, along with our industry agronomy experience. But the farm data really gives us the analytics and the insights, telling us what we need to be doing for each grower.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, so you talked a little bit about the software Premier Crop and, coupled with what you are able to offer, what tools does Premier Crop have to help a grower learn and why?

LANCE MEYER: For the businessman farmer of today, the guy that really enjoys using his data but might not necessarily have the time to do it. The operations that we work with are CEOs of their farm operation. Our advisors work with the grower to collect the farm data, manage the data, organize the data and make sense of the data, letting the farmer farm as they want to, without any time invested. We take care of everything, from variable-rate recommendations, cost tracking, to delivering the analysis in an easy way that the grower can understand, because we all know that looking at data can be pretty overwhelming and hard to make sense of. So, that’s a big piece of what we do, delivering farm data in a way that it’s easy to understand for the grower.

RENEE HANSEN: Yeah, I feel like some of the growers that I talk to in the field, just even around here in our area, even some of my friends that we’ve reached out to, I feel like they just don’t know where to get started. That is the hardest point, to just make that leap to get started with data. What would you say is the first thing? How easy can it be? We take care of it, but what are some of the first steps that they need?

LANCE MEYER: Managing farm data is actually, really, pretty simple. The baseline of everything that we do is tied back to a yield file or that yield map. So, that’s essentially the only thing that we need to get started, that one or two years of historical yield data. I don’t know the stats on that or whatnot, but I think there are some 80% of growers out there that are capable of collecting yield data or are collecting yield data. They just don’t actually know it. I would think that the number’s actually higher than that, given the amount of people that I talk to and the conversations I have with people. You just have to have some yield data to get started. There are also other layers that are great. Having soil data will give us more insights, but the baseline is just yield data, and that’s the majority of growers out there.

RENEE HANSEN: And it can be so overwhelming because there are so many different layers of data, from soil sample data, yield data, planting data, as-applied data, and adding that all up yourself, the brainpower can be exhausting.

LANCE MEYER: You’re exactly right, and that’s our ultimate goal, to help take that lift off your shoulders. I tell growers all the time: “I’m sure the first thing they want to do after they get in from a long day is sit down at their computer and manage all this stuff.” And they’re like: “Yeah, no. That’s not what I want to be doing.” That’s just another little piece of the pie, I guess, the value that Premier Crop ultimately brings.

RENEE HANSEN: Especially when it’s “go time,” when it’s planting or harvest time. There’s probably something they need to be working on, rather than messing around with data.

LANCE MEYER: Yep, and helping with the monitor and all the technical stuff like that is big, too. Growers tell me all the time. When you get a problem in the monitor, and you’re sitting in the field for one or two minutes trying to fix something, that seems like an eternity for a grower sitting there, wanting to get going. I mean, that’s ultimately what they love doing, running the equipment. So, having a little bit of a setback due to the technical stuff can be a big deal.

RENEE HANSEN: When it’s “go time,” it is a race against the clock, no matter what is going on.

LANCE MEYER: That’s right. It doesn’t matter where you are. That’s everybody out there.

yieldmonitor

RENEE HANSEN: Another thing with the tools that Premier Crop is offering we’ve been talking a lot about yield efficiency. Lance, I want you to talk a little bit about yield efficiency. What does success look like when looking at all of these maps from historical yield, ultimately leading to yield efficiency?

LANCE MEYER: With the yield efficiency piece, here at Premier Crop, I mean, we’re essentially redefining the success metric for today’s farmer. For so long, we’ve been focused on yield, but now we bring this concept of yield efficiency that a lot of people might not understand, but we’re helping people get there. Yield efficiency is, essentially, the amount of money in return from your crop that you have to pay land and management costs at the end of the day. So, obviously, yield is the number-one driver of yield efficiency. As long as we can drive higher yields while still lowering our break-even cost per bushel, we’re becoming more profitable, and profitability, for me, is success with my growers. These maps that Premier Crop gives us, they’re really our report card for the season, and that’s how I like to describe it with my growers. As long as we’re lowering that break-even cost per bushel and driving higher yields, like I just mentioned, I call it a successful season, whether it’s $10 an acre or $100 an acre farm profitability. We know that there are dollars left on the table on every acre, so it’s just a matter of finding it with your farm data. Like I said, if it’s a smaller amount or larger amount, I consider that success with my growers.

Yield efficiency score showing profitability

RENEE HANSEN: Do you have a specific example? Do you have a great success story that you saw this year?

LANCE MEYER: There’s actually one big takeaway that really stands out from 2020 and also in 2019. And that’s on the fertilizer side, and managing our fertilizer investment. Make sure that we’re taking into account our crop removals when we’re making fertilizer recommendations. It’s a simple concept, but it’s hard to get across. Every year we grow a crop on a piece of land, we’re taking off nutrients in the grain. The soil supplied nutrients through that crop, and we remove that off from the amount the plant took up. As we stated above, our main goal is to manage our variability in yield. Within that variability in yield, we’re taking off different amounts of nutrients in different parts of the field. If we’re applying our fertilizer the next season to account for the field average and crop removal, we’re ultimately under-applying in a lot of the field and over-applying on a lot of the field, also. This is actually a conversation I had with a soil sampling company, SoilView, Craig Struve, yesterday. He had a slide from Colorado State that says: “95% of the time, you’re going to be over-applying or under-applying fertilizer on your removal if you’re just applying that field average.” That’s why at Premier Crop, using the actual yield file, is exactly what we’ve taken off the field to replace it the next season. We use this equation so we’re not mining down these better areas of the field and then over-applying in the worst areas of our fields. That’s one big example, I guess. That could be, like I said, $50 to $100 an acre right there. That’s one big thing that I found for this season, anyway. Like we said, a lot of growers can do this with their variable-rate technology they have, but they just might not necessarily understand it or believe it pays at this point.

RENEE HANSEN: Thank you so much Lance. 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.

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Three Steps to Combine Farm Agronomics and Economics

We often use the phrase, “Everything agronomic is economic.” What does that really mean?

First, let’s first define agronomics and economics. What is agronomics? That’s everything that we do in the field related to making good management decisions. It’s deciding how much fertilizer to apply and where to put it, planting rates, crop protection, tillage systems and how to incorporate all of this into the farm. Those all go into how we grow our crop. On the economics side, we’re talking about all of the money involved in farming. Farming is a business, and just like any other business, you need to make sure you have cash flow so you have the opportunity to farm again next year, and the year after that. So, how do we focus on agronomics and economics? We do that by analyzing growers’ data. We use that knowledge to help them make decisions on their farm.

Knowing what you’ve done on the farm in the last five, 10, or 20 years can provide valuable knowledge as you plan into the future. However, if you never take that data and don’t use it to make decisions, it’s not doing you any good. It’s important to invest time into collecting your farm data. We work with growers to analyze their collected field data. We add costs to the layers of data including product cost, operations cost, management cost if they have any land-specific cost, and tie that to the yield file so we can see what is making agronomic and economic sense on the farm.

It’s fairly easy to tell where there are higher yields, but it’s a lot harder to know if that yield increase also caused an increase in the pocket book. Did the decision pay for itself? Did you produce enough bushels to offset the cost of production? Every pass across the field matters agronomically, but it also has a cost associated with it. We give you three steps to help combine your farm agronomics and economics below.

1. PLANTING

When you’re preparing to plant, your seed has the highest yield potential it’s ever going to have. Everything we do at Premier Crop is aligned with protecting yield potential, and planting population is a big aspect of this. If you overcrowd the plants, you’re going to make them compete for resources, which will end up reducing your yields. On the flip side, if you have too low of a population, then you’re reducing your yield potential by not having enough in the first place. You can’t produce more bushels of corn if you never plant the seed to begin with.

Combining agronomics and economics is about finding the right rate for the right part of the field, which we accomplish with management zones. A management zone is not just a seeding rate like it is with many other precision ag companies. We manage the field and the operation off of the zones. We break fields into high-producing areas, which are A zones, average-producing areas, which are B zones, and lower-producing areas, which are C zones. The B zones are the types of areas that do pretty well year in and year out, but they don’t have the capability to be the highest producing areas of the field. Our C zones could look like a wet spot, an area shaded by trees, or a family of deer could live nearby and eat it all the time. We manage nearly everything based on these zones.

premiercroppbreakevencostperbushel

In the A zones, our high-producing areas, we push planting populations. We plant more seeds in these areas because these parts of the fields have the capability to produce more bushels. In the C zones, we’re going to pull back our population because we know those spots just simply don’t have the yield potential. By labeling it as a C zone and understanding that it is not going to produce as well, we can manage risk by lowering the planting population. This practice will save money on seed costs in this part of the field because by lowering the population, we have reduced seed cost, which helps the bottom line. However, if we can get part of the field from a C zone to a B zone, or from a B zone to an A zone with fertilizer or any management practice, we will go after that to increase our return to land and management, what we call yield efficiency.

2. FERTILIZER

When variable-rate technologies first came out, the discussion was: “It’s going to save you money and reduce your fertilizer usage.” We found that’s not always the case, though. Instead, grower’s are making better decisions with their planting or fertilizer dollars. They are putting those dollars in the areas of the field where it’s needed and where they can get a return on their investment. We are driving farming towards thinking more on the economic side of the business.

In general with farming, if you’re doing a straight rate across the field, you’re essentially treating every acre the same. We know that every acre is not the same because when you’re harvesting, even if you don’t use a yield monitor, you can see variation in the amount of loads you’re taking off. You can tell how good or bad the corn is as you’re driving across the field. So, why would you treat your inputs the same if you’re not taking the same amount off of it at the end of the day? That’s why it’s so important to tie the economics to planting, and fertilizer. That is where the real benefit lies.

Even if you are locked in on your planting populations, placing different checks in a field through different years allows you to gather historical data and be able to check and say: “In this year, if we’re looking at a cold, wet spring, this is the best population to go with.” Even if we don’t use that specific data in the next year, we are still collecting it for future years.

It is also important to factor in your planting population when you’re determining your nitrogen rates. We often use the example: If you invite more plants to dinner, you have to have enough food to feed them. We could apply a straight rate, but we’re going to be overfeeding the poor-production areas and underfeeding the high-production areas. So, if you have a higher population in the A zones, you need to account for the added food they’re going to need. We can also push the nitrogen rates a little higher in the A zones because we have the capability to produce more bushels, not just because of the higher population but just because the ground is better. By pushing that, you’re taking a little bit more risk, but it’s a smart risk.

3. ANALYTICS

To get started looking at a grower’s analytics, we first pull yield monitor data. Then we look at everything the grower has done throughout the year, whether it’s fertilizer, lime, planting, nutrients, or crop protection products. We dig in and see what the economic benefit was. When planting, did we build small test plots into the planting maps for our growers called Learning Blocks. We then use the information from our all of our data within a management zone to see if we have the right rate. Learning Blocks not only show us what produces the highest yield, but it also shows which population provides the greatest return on investment. Once the prescription is in a grower’s monitor, they can just focus on farming. It’s very little thinking on a grower’s part because we’re constantly constantly checking our work. It is important that we prove what we’re doing is the best option possible.

premiercropgrowerseedingtrials

The analytics is where the magic happens. Not many companies look at what happened after harvest. Premier Crop uses our platform to make informed decisions based on what the growers data is proving through on-farm trials, Learning Blocks and Enhanced Learning Blocks to provide statical confidence to help the grower see their profit.

Not every operation has the same goals and not everyone sets out to produce the max amount of bushels. It’s a “do it and check” process. We go out and do something, we check our work, and then we make corrections for the next year. As a grower, you’re always busy. You are going from one thing to the next, and there’s always something to do. Going through the data can be a tedious task that leaves you feeling like your time would’ve been better spent elsewhere. The benefit of working with a Premier Crop Advisor is that we retrieve the data, clean it up, and enter it into the system. A grower just needs to hit “record” when they’re running through the field.

Want to learn how you can work with an Agronomic Advisor to start making agronomic decisions based on your economics? Contact us to schedule a demo today.

Learn more about the farm profitability.

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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

Big Data With Local Context

Big data is a phrase that has integrated this world of technology across industries. It’s about capturing relevant data from a huge number of sources, and translating it into something that people can use. Big data provides actionable insights to solve problems at scale and at speed. In this world of ag, we have billions of dollars of venture capital funding pouring into agriculture through technology builds. Big data has been at the center of that.

There are several ways big data can be advantageous to agriculture. It depends on your goals. What do you want to accomplish with the data? Obviously, big data is enabled by computing power. We have much more capacity because of server farms and cloud computing. These let us collect more and crunch through more data.

In ag, the topic of big data is relatively recent. Before yield monitors, we made many decisions in ag based on what I would call small data, which was a lot of replicated trials. A replication in a trial might be 25-feet-long, replicated three times, and becomes an observation. So now with yield monitors and all the other devices, we’re able to collect data at a high resolution. In a hundred-acre field, we would divide that field into 4,000 unique observations that are geo-referenced, tied with a lat, long, yield value and hundreds of layers of data underneath.

There’s a ton of data being collected today in ag from many different sources. Much of it is public. It seems like there are newer companies trying to take advantage of public data and the complexity of sourcing it and putting it together into some usable format. Public data is not drilled down to a level where I think it’s all that helpful. If you’re a company selling an analytics package to a grain trading company, you don’t need it refined. With that type of data, you’re trying to understand global yield trends and how it will move the supply chain. So a lot of the public sources aren’t as valuable to a grower as they are to other stakeholders.

MYTHS OF BIG DATA

Let’s talk about some of the myths out there on big data. We often hear the words “weather modeling,” but what we’re talking about is predicting the future. It might be future weather or future performance.

All models are based on assumptions. It’s about understanding specific geographies within fields, and how they’re similar to geographies in other fields. It’s almost like the more data you get, the more it lets you break it apart into more meaningful insights. The power of what we have in ag is that you have different growing environments every year. As a company, we get to observe different growing environments within the same year. So, Nebraska or Minnesota can have a dramatically different growing environment than Indiana and Ohio. For example, you could see how a hybrid or variety performs in the same year in dramatically different growing environments because you’re seeing it across these big geographies. It’s highly dependent on believing in the idea that agronomy is local, that agronomy and geography have a really close relationship with each other. It relates to the idea of big data, and aggregating it across multiple different agronomic environments. So how do we give it enough credibility that people can make decisions?

Over the years, the ability to aggregate data geographically has been a big deal. The ultimate power of all this is at a subfield level because that’s where you drive change. Every farmer who works with us wants to see beyond their own operation. They want to see agronomic practices, trends and rates.

When a farmer starts working with us, they usually want to see the biggest data set possible, meaning they want to see data from a large geography. However, we believe that local data is king in agriculture. The bigger, richer data set from a local perspective is more powerful because there are more things that are relevant and stay the same. We almost went through a decade where it seemed like the whole seed industry on corn was going to fixed-year numbers. The only way you could drive yield was to drive population. No matter what size of database, we saw a trend. We were marching up 400 or 500 seeds per acre for a decade because that’s what it took in order to drive yields.

Now, we’ve gone through almost a decade where it seems like there’s more flex in numbers. We’re producing much higher yields at lower populations. However, when we were going through that match up in population, growers started looking at row width. We had this phenomenon where everybody was chasing 20-inch corn or even narrower corn. The plants were on top of each other, and needed to be more spaced out. In the data, 20-inch corn was a South Dakota and southern Minnesota phenomenon. That’s where we were seeing the most 20-inch corn. We had people outside of that area that wanted to drill down. They wanted to see data outside of their area because they were trying to make a decision about switching to a narrower row of corn. This was a way to space out the plants as they continue to drive the population.

Since we’re capturing data off the planter, as it goes across the field, we’ve been able to calculate planting speed. One of the very early signs was we had a report that showed the faster they planted the corn, the better and higher the yield. That’s an example where faster planting speed was correlated to higher yields, but when you actually interviewed the grower and talked to the grower about what happened in that field, parts of the field worked up rough. And so, they slowed down because they were trying to maintain seed-soil contact. As they went into those areas that worked up rough, they slowed the tractor down and slowed the planter down. In the part of the field that worked up great, they planted at normal speed or higher speed and, sure enough, that was where the higher yields were. The rougher areas worked up rough, so the real correlation was to field conditions of planting, but it showed up as planting speeds. So, it was an example where you can have correlation, but it doesn’t necessarily mean causation.

One of the many myths people believe about big data is that if you haven’t got involved already, you’re probably too late.

Many growers are sitting on data and no one has helped them put it to use. There are growers who quit caring about yield data because they haven’t been able to use it. One of our successes is that we grab that historic yield data and try to use it to capture the variability within fields. You can go from zero to big data really quick in farming. You can start at any time and begin creating value right away.

Big Data data analytics data driven decisions farm analytics hybrid selection nutrient removals precision ag trials