Lyle Drees did not want his son to stay on the family farm. He knew the struggles his son would face if he followed in his footsteps and urged him to look at a more stable career. One that offered the financial security farming cannot. It was time, he told his son, to...
Seed selection is one of the most important decisions a farmer makes. Even if farmers do everything else right, planting the wrong hybrid or variety on their fields can reduce yields and eliminate their profits. Selecting seeds that improve yields requires the ability...
How often have you heard or thought “why does it cost so much to develop an app?” A better question may be, “what is the cost if we don’t develop one?” Agribusiness app development costs are not inconsequential, but digital apps and platforms are a centrifugal force...
Gone are the days when retailers could compete on selling seeds, equipment and crop protection products. In 2022, the competitive advantage will go to advisors who know how to help farmers benefit from their on-farm data. For farmers and advisors, data offers...
Big Picture, Hidden Risks Who isn’t awed by the vivid clarity of drone imagery? With ultra-high resolution, multispectral imagery, you can spot an aphid on a soybean leaf well before those pests are well established. What drone imagery can’t do is provide a complete...
Rural America has an internet access problem, and for the foreseeable future, it will continue to be reality for growers and ranchers in remote areas. While rural connectivity is improving, a 2019 report found that 25% of farms cannot get online. Without access,...
In AgTech, big data means collecting everything. The temperature of the air as you plant, the moisture of the kernel as you harvest, the exact coordinate of each weed you find; it all gets absorbed into the digital cloud, analyzed, and processed. The end result is...
Sustainability may be agriculture’s biggest buzzword, but there’s a new sense of urgency. Everyone along the supply chain recognizes the need for data harmonization to grow more food, feed more people and slow climate change. For farmers to improve soil health,...
As I wrote last time, I didn’t know much about farming when I got into AgTech. I did, however, know about technology and a bit about farmers. I grew up in a town of less than five hundred people who relied on the land and ocean to survive. I worked in the fields to...
I didn’t expect to be a digital farmer. Like many people who grew up in a small town, I played a bit of Farm Simulator and read Little House on the Prairie, but that was the extent of my interest in agriculture. What fascinated me was the shiny new world unfolding...
