ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Farm input suppliers and precision agriculture software developers continue rolling out new platforms designed to help producers analyze crop profitability, as evidenced by two announcements during the week of Aug. 28.

 

Syngenta announced its field analysis software would now enable Midwest growers to generate variable cost per-bushel maps, through an agreement with West Des Moines-based Premier Crop Systems, LLC. “The software integration provides growers an opportunity to understand how their cost of production varies within each of their fields,” said Mark Stelford, general manager at Premier Crop Systems.

And BASF last week announced its Maglis platform will now allow Canadian growers to make more detailed farm financial decisions, through an agreement with Proagrica, which markets Farm plan and Gatekeeper software.

These were the two more recent announcements in the ongoing flurry of activity from input suppliers to sign up producers for so-called “Big Data” tools. Many producers continue to have concerns over adopting new farm management platforms relying on Big Data, especially in light of issues around data ownership.

There remains plenty of time for farms to evaluate what Big Data tools will be best for farm financial decisions, said Terry Griffin, a Kansas State University economist who studies how producers adopt, and profit from, precision agriculture.

“There are many options available, but one option that should be considered is, ‘Wait, wait, until a clear benefit outweighs any perceived costs from sharing data,’” said Griffin. “There will be many more opportunities in the future.”

In the present, he said producers should pay attention to the basics – especially collecting good harvest yield data.

That means making sure yield monitors are properly calibrated. “If not then the data are suspect and may not be useful for decision-making” and using big data tools in the future, he explained. 

 

Griffin was lead author in a KSU analysis, published last week, looking at the use of precision agriculture tools on Kansas farms. That research found farms using yield monitors and precision soil sampling were most likely to adopt variable rate technologies in 2017. That will likely also be true next year, he said.

Many of the precision agriculture software announcements come as companies attempt to offer tools that draw upon data collected by different types of farm equipment. “Efficiently connecting and integrating diverse data sources in the agricultural supply chain is one of the biggest barriers to leveraging the benefits of precision agriculture,” said Alistair Knott, Proagrica’s Precision Agriculture Development director.

Larger farms, which have been the earliest adopters of precision technologies,will likely continue searching for ways to cut production costs and increase returns on investment.

“In the long run, the only way to compete successfully in the farming business dominated by commodity production is to be a low-cost producer,” said Michael Langemeier and Michael Boehlje, Purdue University economists, in a July article.