Have you joined ProVantage yet?
Three crop seasons ago, we came out with our ProVantage complete analysis program for our growers. Our growers were just beginning to be hit with the likes of Climate, Encirca, and other companies for access to our data. It was always the belief of Stutsmans that the grower owned the data and that that data should not be used against them in any way. With our pairing with Premier Crop Systems, we knew that we could better serve our customers, thus our house brand of “ProVantage” was born.
Half of our sales staff recently returned from Premier Crop’s conference, where we were excited at the new offerings that they have developed for the 2016 crop year and their vision for the future. The first being the release of Optix, which some of our growers have been asking for. A very fast way to benchmark a field based off of several attributes, which can be defined, to show a grower how their fields are performing vs. a given group. The second is Enhanced Learning Blocks. This will enable our growers to be able to defend or not defend the use of fertilizer or seed use. All this brought about because many of the nitrogen models being used are based off of the following data:
- 1,500 Nitrogen rate trials over 7 states
- 90% of these have been in the last 15 years
- 1,350 Nitrogen rate trials over the last 15 years over 7 states
- 13 nitrogen trials/state/year!
With the concern for input costs, environmental concerns, and being more efficient, this is an amazingly few amount of trials! This is not even considering the amount of accuracy with these models.
I’m sure you have read about ProVantage mentioned in the monthly newsletters, seen some field signs, or the back of our company vehicles, but maybe have never taken the opportunity to ask, “What can this do for me?” Maybe you do not have all the bells and whistles when it comes to your equipment or you don’t farm 4,000 acres. The smallest grower in our program is just under 200 acres. This grower knows that every bushel matters. All you really need is a yield monitor in your combine.
Still don’t know if you’re wanting to know more? Why not ask your Stutsman sales person for more information! We recognize that our growers need to be as efficient as possible in order to maximize every dollar, every acre, every trip across the field, so why not see if this is a good fit for you?