Challenges Bring Opportunities
By: Chase Gingerich, ProVantage Specialist and Agronomy Sales
Every year the weather is one of the most challenging aspects of business that every farmer has to deal with. The 2019 growing season reminded us of this and how little control we have. Managing a farm is a balance of making a plan, executing a plan, and calling audibles for the elements that are beyond our control. To learn from the challenges that we faced, we need to ask ourselves how can we turn those challenges into actionable opportunities? What can we learn from our data to maximize the factors that are within our control and to make those audible calls easier to make?
Although each of our customers utilizes ProVantage a little differently, these are five common ways ProVantage is used to identify opportunities for improvement.
1. Data Collection and Organization
Does your farm data and records look like a natural disaster just went through your office? Having data is one thing. Having data organized and in a place where it’s easily accessible is completely different. ProVantage’s database stores and organizes your data so it can be used to make those important decisions that impact your bottom line.
2. Elite Network of Grower Data Analytics
Everyone is hungry for more information. Farm magazines are loaded with information on plots, hybrids, and products that claim to have huge returns. Real-world results often are different, and farmers are often skeptical when what was an 85% winner turns into a flop on their farm. With ProVantage, you have access to anonymous grower-owned data from hundreds of thousands of acres from farmers just like you. This data can help you narrow down where a particular hybrid or product could work best on your operation.
3. Comprehensive Fertilizer Management
Fertilizer accounts for 20-25% of a farmer’s budget and is a big
decision that each grower faces every year. By incorporating yield management zones with ProVantage, growers can uniquely apply nutrients to areas where we see the highest returns beyond soil tests and soil types. Since fertilizer is a high percentage of the crop budget, who wouldn’t want the best information available to maximize the return on the rates chosen? Whether it is phosphorous, potassium, nitrogen, sulfur, micro-nutrients, or manure, we have growers analyzing every aspect of each nutrient to get the highest return on one of the most expensive portions of a crop budget.
4. Frequent, Confidential Data Interpretation and Interaction
Since agronomy is complex, strategies can’t be made and executed to one operation’s needs and then be expected to work the same on a different grower’s farm. Large businesses, like nationally branded retailers, struggle with this concept. Large farms can also struggle with this concept. Markets and agronomy are both extremely localized. One-on-one, advisor-farmer conversations and data interpretation allows everyone to share ideas to help impact farm profitability. I am not an expert in fixing our washing machine-ask my wife, but with my ‘boots-on-the-ground’ experience and tools ProVantage brings, together we can make the most confident decisions in the challenges that you face. We can bring forward areas in your operation that you are doing well and also identify areas that could be improved upon. This one-on-one interaction constructively challenges each aspect of every farm.
5. Exclusive Variable Rate Seeding Management
Variable-rate (VRT) seeding is the fastest growing trend in our industry; for a good reason considering seed makes up 15-20% of an annual crop budget. ProVantage growers are using their data to pinpoint seed inputs down to the square foot to maximize economical returns exclusively to their farm. Many companies are creating very generic VRT seeding prescriptions. However, strategic VRT seeding with ProVantage has offered some of the largest returns for our growers who have used their own collected data and turned it into prescriptions that are superior to what others in the industry try to create. Since we are using your data and your input to build successful prescriptions, you can be confident that they are uniquely exclusive to only your fields.
Although we can’t control the uncontrollable, there are many factors we can manage to get to our preferred destination at the end of the year. Whether it’s putting inputs where they are best utilized, organizing data so it’s easier to digest or gaining additional insight, there are always ways to turn challenges into opportunities for improvement.
