Reuters reported as such on Feb. 10, noting that deep staff cuts to the department made by the Trump administration have been seen as a main culprit. Reuters said there was growing skepticism in the USDA’s corn acres, which has concerned those who depend on the ups and downs of corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Corn acres and distrust

The crux of the matter is the USDA’s corn estimates from June 2025 compared to those this January. Last month, the department finalized 2025/26 corn acres at 98.8 million planted and 91.3 million harvested. Those numbers are up 8.7 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively, from 2024/25.

In June, the USDA estimated 2025/26 planted corn acres at 95.3 million. Harvested acres were projected to be 87.4 million.

It’s a given that adjustments will be made over time, but the scope of the adjustment has the corn industry worried about the quality of the data from the USDA. After all, the USDA is widely considered to be among the best sources for such information, be it from farmer surveys or model-based analysis. In terms of accuracy, the USDA has typically been considered a gold standard.

Lack of willing farmer participation in the USDA surveys is part of the problem. That’s compounded by fewer staff interpreting and processing that data.

There are always going to be skeptics when it comes to such an information gathering process. It’s the level of that distrust that can become disturbing.

Canola harvest

As a reporter, I’ve often compared the numbers coming from Statistics Canada (StatCan) and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to what the USDA says about Canada.

I marked with some amazement how close StatCan and the USDA came to estimating the 2025/26 Canadian canola harvest. StatCan pegged it at 21.80 million tonnes, while the USDA projected 22 million. That told me that StatCan was likely pretty close to the amount of canola.

Unfortunately, the USDA’s reports on other countries have also come under scrutiny — again, because there are far fewer staff to oversee gathering that information.

The USDA now is looking inward. It’s trying to figure out what happened with its corn numbers and how to rebuild the credibility it’s lost.

Let’s hope effective solutions are put in place that keep this treasure trove of information coming.

The post Can we trust the USDA crop data anymore? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The Data Literacy for Cow-Calf Producers project aims to give farmers and ranchers the chance to discuss best practices and learn from experts and peers about how to use data to make better business decisions.
Data management has varied adoption in the cow-calf sector.

“It’s all over the map. Some are tracking a lot of data, like how many animals they get out on pasture over a period of time, so they get some productivity and performance data,” says Alan Hall, executive director, of the Agricultural Research and Extension Council of Alberta (ARECA), the organization that provides services to the 12 forage and applied research associations around the province.

“There’s still a fair chunk of the cow-calf operations that don’t weigh the calves when they come off” pasture, he says.
Barriers to the adoption of more data recording and analysis in the cow-calf sector include the extra work that recording data can take, says Hall. There also can be challenges with service to help with software, troubleshoot hardware and data services like internet and cellular connection.

“The technologies are there, but it’s one thing to have the technology and it is quite another to make it work seamlessly,” says Hall.

The project will accept 30 cow-calf producers from Alberta. Two workshops bookend the program. The first is June 13, 2024 and the second Nov. 28, 2024 and both are based in Red Deer.

Attendees will have to attend both sessions.

In between, the producers can go back to their farms and work on what they learned, but they will also be part of a six-month mentorship program, where they will be able to virtually connect with the rest of their cohort and experts between sessions.

Susan Markus will be teaching part of the course, including looking at metrics producers can measure and evaluate that will have an impact on their farm or ranch.

The real win for producers is to be able to find something in the data that helps make basic jobs more efficient, so the data collection isn’t as onerous.

“If people took a look at some of this data, they maybe don’t realize what more it can do for them,” says Markus, a livestock research scientist with Results Driven Agriculture Research. She’s based at Lakeland College.
Collecting data is one step of the process, says Markus, but interpreting the data is another and that’s really the focus of the project.

“It’s one thing to tell people to keep better records, but if you do nothing with it, what good was that?”
The technology for data collection on beef operations is available, says Markus, including the fact that cattle are required to have RFID tags which can be read by wands or panels and Bluetooth scales can automate the recording of data onto digital devices.

“But you have to do a really good job with your basic information, know how you stack up against industry benchmarks, to know what areas you’re going to focus on, where you’re going to change,” she says.

The next step is to match production data to financial data and Agri-Food Management Excellence will be involved in the program to help producers make that connection.

Program partners include Olds College, Lakeland College, EMILI, Agri-Food Management Excellence, RDAR, and the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency. It is being coordinated by the Simpson Centre in the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

Funding comes from the Alberta government’s announcement in April of $1.2 million for the Alberta Digitalization Agriculture Program run by the Simpson Centre.

Many other organizations are involved in helping to promote the program, such as ARECA.

“We see this as a pilot to get started but this could well lead to some longer-term kinds of efforts. Bringing some of this type of data collection and data analysis that producers have can help them sharpen their business decisions,” says Hall.

For more information visit the University of Calgary’s website. 

The post New program focuses on data literacy for cow-calf producers  appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

On one hand, integrating all the on-farm data they can gather with government systems, equipment manufacturers and other software companies could help farmers manage productivity and make decisions easier.

On the other hand, farmers worry that those same developers might turn the richness of data against them.

Losing ownership of their data is the biggest reason that farmers hesitate to sign up for cloud-based software solutions, attendees heard at Manitoba Ag Days.

“You have to be able to trust that once you put your data out there in the cloud, you aren’t losing control over it,” said Darcy Herauf, director of the AgExpert division at Farm Credit Canada.

“And although we treat it like it’s your data and we provide a safe, secure vault to store your data, you’re still putting it in the cloud; you’re losing some control over it. And when you share that with another company, you’re losing a little bit more feeling of control.”

Why it matters: Farm productivity and on-farm decisions can benefit from data integration, but trust issues are a real and present hurdle.

In 2018, FCC made its first jump to the cloud with AgExpert Field (AE Field), a full field management package. That same year, AgExpert became the first Canadian software company to receive the Ag Data Transparent (ADT) Seal of Approval.

ADT is a non-profit organization that evaluates and verifies that ag tech companies follow basic guidelines when collecting, using, storing and transferring farmers’ agricultural data.

“We believe that farmers own their data. Neither Farm Credit (Canada) nor AgExpert makes any claims to farms’ individual data sets,” said Herauf. “We want to make sure that they can control who they share (with). We make it as easy to not share their data as it is to share it. We really want that control in the hands of our customers.”

It’s the reason FCC pushed to bring ADT certification to Canada, Herauf added. It hoped that, with ADT on the landscape, the sector could build “a whole ecosystem based on that trust certification.”

In 2019, AgExpert brought its farm accounting software, AgExpert Accounting (AE Accounting), to the cloud.

“The easiest way to remember what AE Accounting is, is to think of it as QuickBooks, built specifically for Canadian agriculture,” said Herauf. “Anything that a farm needs to manage (in) the financial aspects of their operation can be done in AE Accounting.”

The software is designed to work with AE Field, which Herauf flagged for its ability to help farmers keep tabs on their cost of production.

“By digitizing every pass or every activity you do on that field throughout the growing season, (AE Field) can start tracking your in-season cost of production to help marry those in-season agronomy decisions with financial decisions,” he said.

Cloud benefits

Some of the promised benefits of cloud-based programs are similiar in agriculture to those in other sectors; they are convenient, keep material in one spot, and provide peace of mind that comes with redundancy. Information is no longer tied to one place so it is not susceptible to fires, floods or local network computer glitches.

“Having it in the cloud means it’s always available and it’s always backed up. We have two copies of everything,” said Herauf.

But the most significant benefits arise when farm data is connected with other data sets. That’s done through APIs, or application program interfaces.

“APIs allow different systems to talk to each other,” Herauf said. “That’s what really makes it easy for our customers to be able to share their data. We have partnerships with lots of other ag-tech companies that other Canadian farmers are using under the principle of ‘enter data once in any system and use it multiple times.’”

Trust versus optimization

Techies get excited about opportunities for a high level of connection, but that’s also where trust issues get serious. Even so, that’s where the technology is headed, said Herauf. The trend is toward integration, despite concerns over data ownership and control.

Rather than manually entering data, machines track it and send it to the cloud as it’s gathered.

“So I can bring that data from my machine into AE Accounting, share it with an insurance provider, and share it with whoever without having to do a lot of manual data entry,” said Herauf. “We think that’s the future.”

Where it’s at

The integration between farmers, food processors and ag-tech companies is well underway at AgExpert. The company has integrated its platform with John Deere’s My Ops Centre farm management system, so that information gathered by machinery can be shared with AE Field.

AgExpert launched a similar integration with Climate FieldView’s digital farming platform last summer and also has an integration agreement with McCain Foods.

“If you are a potato producer and you are using AE Field to track the field activities, we re-use that data to help populate CanadaGAP forms and PSA forms,” said Herauf, referencing programs meant to record farm practices and track farm sustainability.

“Our integration with McCain now takes that data right from AE Field and puts it right into the McCain system. This makes it smooth and relatively painless for all of our customers.”

In March, AgExpert hopes to launch an integration with hail insurance provider Palliser Insurance, headquartered in Saskatoon.

“If you need to apply for hail insurance, you have to manually re-enter all of that data in the system just to get a quote (right now),” said Herauf. “If you have 30, 40, or 50 fields, not only is it a lot of time, it’s a lot of chance for error. With our integration, it’s three clicks of a button, and you can bring in information from AE Field.”

Other tech integrations on the horizon include OCR invoice and receipt data extraction with Quebec-based Aleop; transactional data collection with the financial services company PLAID and input costing through AgConnexion.

Herauf said it’s about making life easier for farmers.

“We think it’s really important to help farmers make better decisions or optimize that decision making process.”

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“I’m not a big technology guy,” said Ferguson, who with his wife Regan farms 3,000 acres at Melfort, Sask.

But for him, using the various data-based management tools available in farming today isn’t just helpful, but essential. The problem is that bringing it all together in one place is critical so that he can handle it and not become overwhelmed, which is why he like Bayer’s FieldView.

AG IN MOTION VIDEO: Farmers review their data-driven decisions

The system brings together data streams from various sources, allowing a farmer to take a more holistic approach to management than hopping from app to app to app.

“Take time to learn it,” said Regan Ferguson, who likes the logistic and cost insights the program allows her to develop.

On Tuesday at Ag in Motion, Bayer put together a farmers’ panel to talk about how each uses the program. While it allows for much sophisticated analysis, if that’s what a farmer wants, it also allows for simpler but essential tasks, said Chris Bauer of Lake Lenore, Sask.

“We mark rocks with FieldView,” said Bauer about one of those basic uses, in which rocks are spotted during field operations, pinned and then picked up later.

Integrating data flow is important when most farms run various types of equipment.

“With the rainbow of colours of equipment on the farm, having a single data point … was number one for us,” said Bauer.

Eston, Sask. farmer Dave Hewlitt said that as well as the management and production gains that are possible with better data management, being able to show others a farm’s true results is likely to become more and more important.

“Verification might start to really matter,” he said.

While systems like FieldView are relatively new developments, in another way they have been around as long as farmers have been able to read and write.

“We used to say you have to put it down with pen and paper,” said Mike Ferguson.

“Now it’s on a tablet.”

— Ed White reports for the Western Producer from Winnipeg.

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“You have got to have the root purpose of why you got that technology. Either that or you talk to others to help you find that purpose,” said Regan Ferguson, who farms with her husband, Mike, near Melfort.

“I find that once you have a purpose, you’re more apt to dig into it further and become more comfortable with it because you’re finally finding the value in it.”

The Fergusons are first-year users of Bayer’s Climate FieldView, a multi-application digital agriculture platform. They discussed Fieldview and digital ag in general at a roundtable held Tuesday at Ag in Motion near Langham, Sask.

Research can take the mystery out of unfamiliar technology, said Ferguson.

“The more I looked into Climate, did research and learned about it, I found the ‘why’ and the purpose of its need on our farm and got more excited to get it in place this year.”

Climate FieldView has given her the ability to keep track of all equipment in the field, what it’s doing and whether it’s doing it right. It also provides a detailed record of the operation.

“It was reassuring to know that we had some kind of data to back us up if we ever needed it,” said Ferguson.

Bayer says Climate FieldView was designed to centralize data, visuals and reporting in a package that producers can interpret and act upon, by optimizing fertility, seeding management or other crop operations.

“We’ve got to do this because of our return on investment with chemical and fertility. We just want to put the fertilizer where it needs to be,” said Ferguson.

— Jeff Melchior reports for Alberta Farmer Express from Edmonton.

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“In agriculture, just like in other contexts… there are really powerful interests behind the collection of data and the use and misuse of data,” said author Kelly Bronson in an interview with the Co-operator.

Bronson is Canada Research Chair in Science and Society at the University of Ottawa.

In her book The Immaculate Conception of Data, she examines a predominant way of looking at agricultural data and technology as raw material, untouched by human hands or biases.

This is especially true with ‘big ag’ and agribusiness, but Bronson also shows how small-scale ‘activist’ farmers, who use open-source data and cheap electronics, fall into the same trap.

There’s a growing awareness among social media users that Facebook (Meta, as it’s now called), Google and the other overlords of the internet collect data from users and use it to target people with ads or sell data sets to other companies.

More nefarious uses of data have gotten a lot of press.

In 2018, it was revealed that Facebook had sold data to marketing firm Cambridge Analytica, which used it to target voters with ads and political messages during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, CBC reported that year.

“[Big agribusiness companies] increasingly centre their business models on the collection and processing of data,” writes Bronson. However, public scholars have given this little critical attention.

The ‘immaculate conception of data’ mindset (she calls it ‘ICD’ throughout the book) helps big agribusiness stay under the radar. It also strengthens their pitch to farmers and investors.

Solving problems digitally

Tech leaders and companies pitch digital agriculture as a problem solver.

Bronson describes a 2012 video from John Deere that envisions a not-too-distant future where data collected by farm machinery alerts farmer “Terry” to an impending storm, tells him when best to irrigate, and where his tractor drives itself while he farms from his living room.

[RELATED] Cybercriminals target equipment manufacturers

Of course, John Deere machinery already generates a wealth of data from the time the farmer opens the cab door. Computer algorithms find patterns and insights in that data, and farmers can pay to get those analytics to inform their decisions.

“Most corporate data scientists predict that in the future, data-driven advice will be delivered in ‘real time’ to ‘smart’ farm equipment, which will use data mining to make micro-adjustments to farm equipment, which will use micro-adjustments to farm tasks,” writes Bronson.

A common phrase is “data-driven agriculture,” as if the data itself was solving problems, untouched by human biases.

That “works to invisibilize” all the people and human decisions that go into deciding what data is collected, how it gets used and which interests it serves, Bronson said.

Paying twice

Which interests does farm data serve?

It’s almost impossible to tell, Bronson told the Co-operator. In her attempts to research it, she found most of that information hidden behind legal mechanisms. People wouldn’t talk to her about it.

She suggested that past behavior may predict future behavior. Input suppliers have used price discrimination before, she said. If they had access to large amounts of farm-level data, they may be able to more accurately pinpoint regional needs and increase prices accordingly.

It also ticks people off that ag companies are creating huge profits with data that farmers collect, Bronson said.

Facebook users pay for this ‘free’ platform with their data. Farmers pay to use their own data, plus agribusiness companies can sell the data sets for another round of profits.

“[Farmers] are paying twice,” Bronson said.

Technologies can solve problems, Bronson said. However, if the “political economy surrounding them and the legal infrastructure surrounding them is not organized really carefully… then we could land ourselves in trouble.”

The post The way we talk about digital agriculture obscures interests behind it, says author appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

But at Hebert Grain Ventures, their motto is, “If it’s not broke, you haven’t looked hard enough.”

“We don’t believe that, just because we had a good year or a good yield, that’s enough,” said Evan Shout, the Saskatchewan farm’s chief financial officer.

“If we can cut costs and increase gross revenues just by looking at data analytics, we’re going to do that.”

By itself, the data being collected on farms today, although voluminous, is “essentially raw information — unusable in most cases, and not accurate in most cases,” Shout said at the recent AgSmart event at Alberta’s Olds College.

Data analytics takes that data to the next level, turning it into something useful for making profitable decisions, he said.

At Hebert Grain Ventures, a 22,000-acre grain operation in southern Saskatchewan, they track and analyze everything — including financials, employees, and equipment in the field.

Data can reveal patterns that might otherwise be missed, providing opportunities to make more money or spend less, both bolstering the bottom line.

“All of this information is big data, but without actually putting it in an analytical form, you don’t get the usage from it,” he said.

Part of the problem for most farmers is the cost of new technology. But it’s a common misconception that farmers need to spend money on technology to make money off the data it could give them, said Shout.

“The No. 1 spot for data analytics is your own financial statements,” he said. “Everybody has to file a tax return. Everybody has financial statements from the bank. All of your decision-making for a year — capital expenditures, financing, when you’re going to buy inputs, when you’re going to sell — can be given to you by your historical financial statements.

“You don’t have to make a bunch of capital expenditures to get this information. Your financials will give you a good starting point.”

Data and people

But at Hebert Grain Ventures, their first focus is on their people.

“You wouldn’t think data analytics when you hear this, but… we have behaviour analysis done for every employee,” said Shout.

When a new worker is hired, they complete Myers-Briggs and Kolbe personality tests to determine their work styles, and then they fill out a list of their A (love it), B (don’t mind doing it), and C (hate it) tasks.

“You would think picking rocks would always be a C, but our best rock picker is our bookkeeper. She loves to get out of the office. She doesn’t want the stress of running a drill. So we put her on rock picking. Without those behaviour analyses, we would never have known what she wanted to do.”

There’s also a detailed employee handbook and training system detailing tasks, expectations, and policies and procedures.

While it “doesn’t sound like a big deal,” the system is key for landing and retaining good employees, he said.

“Losing a very valued employee can cost a business upwards of two times that salary. We want to retain people. So what do we do? We have pension plans, we have benefits packages, we have corporate trucks for longtime employees — anything to retain good help.”

From their data, they also know that 2,000 acres is the most one full-time employee can manage and that they’ll be paying 1.25 hours per acre. So if you’re running a 10,000-acre farm, for instance, you’ll need six full-time employees.

“That’s our sweet spot. We know those numbers because historically, that’s what’s been proven,” said Shout. “It’s just math. Our historicals have given us the data analytics to figure out our human resource issues.”

Equipment optimization

Hebert Grain Ventures has also cracked the code on making the most of its machinery.

“The biggest drag on farms right now is machinery, but new machinery is not the problem,” said Shout. “It’s actually about quantity, not quality. We’re looking for optimization, or utilization of the equipment we already have.”

For example, the amount of time that nozzles are running on the average sprayer in Western Canada is 37.5 per cent. That means when the keys are in the ignition, it’s sitting idle about 35 per cent of the time and in transport about 26 per cent of the time.

When Hebert Grain Ventures pulled its own data in 2017, they were sitting around 39 per cent.

“Once you know that number, it kind of scares you a little bit. So we tried to figure out ways to improve it,” he said.

“We didn’t go out and buy a new trailer — obviously, we weren’t using the one we already had. What we did was beef up our spray trailers.”

They hired a summer student to run the spray trailer and did batch fills with a stopwatch at every fill. As a result, the average fill time declined from 22 minutes to seven minutes.

“Last year, our (nozzles on) number went to 54.8 per cent. That’s not real good, but it’s an improvement,” he said. “All we did was beef up a spray trailer, and we improved 75 cents an acre. Seventy-five cents doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s only one machine and one aspect.”

Input efficiencies

Crop inputs are another.

“We find that most producers do not farm the top 60 per cent of their fields very efficiently,” he said. “We’re very good at farming the whole field at an average, but we’re not very good at concentrating on our most productive 60 per cent.”

Shout knows that if the operation manages to get 100 per cent of the rainfall from their 30-year historic average, they can hit 86-bushel canola — and if they want to hit a mid-50-bushel-per-acre average, they will need to hit 86 bushels per acre on their top 60 per cent most productive land to account for the losses in the bottom 40 per cent of their fields.

But he also knows that three pounds of nitrogen are required for every bushel of canola, and if they want to grow 80 bushels on that top 60 per cent of the field, they’ll need 240 pounds of nitrogen. Assuming there’s a carry-over of about 20 pounds and 30 pounds of organic matter, they still need to apply 190 pounds of nitrogen.

“How many farmers put 190 pounds of N down? Not many.”

(That rate is achieved by top dressing and putting anhydrous down in the fall so it doesn’t sit directly with the seed.)

Last year, they bought soil moisture probes to maximize the limited moisture they were getting. At the time, the farm was sitting at about 40 per cent average rainfall, and every farm around them had parked their tractors — they weren’t about to waste money on top dressing when it was so dry. But based on the 30-year average, the probability of rain in the next month was quite high, and the new soil moisture probe showed there was still 11 inches of water in the ground.

“So what did we do? We went out and top dressed — 30 pounds of N across the farm. Everybody around us thought we were nuts,” said Shout.

The gamble paid off. Check strips produced 11 bushels an acre less than the rest of the field, and protein levels jumped from 12 to 13.9 per cent, earning them a premium.

“That means we received $1.25 a bushel more just based on protein across the whole 80 bushels an acre, plus we achieved 11 bushels per acre more than we would have,” said Shout.

“It cost us $15 for the N and $6 for the applicator fees — $21 an acre — but our net return was $162 an acre. It’s a seven-to-one return, all because of what the moisture probe told us.”

On your farm

For the average farmer (one who isn’t an accountant, as Shout is), all of this data analytics might sound overwhelming. Equipment can help, but only if the return on investment is clear.

“You can buy capital expenditures. You can buy the planter, you can buy the moisture probes, you can buy all this stuff, but it has to save you money in the long run.”

Beyond that, it can be hard to know where to start, said Shout.

His advice? Figure out where you want to be in five years, and work backwards from that to build a plan.

“Let’s say in five years, you want to run 24 hours a day — how did you get there? Well, you could implement shifts, offer overtime, focus on training, whatever,” he said.

“That’s what we did, and we were there in two years.”

Shout also suggests turning your advisers into unofficial partners.

“Stop treating your bank like you’re begging them for money. Make them your partner instead,” he said. “Lawyers, accountants — they’re not there just to write you bills. If you’re going to pay them, you might as well pay them for good advice. If all your accountant is doing is filing compliance forms, find a new accountant.”

And increasingly, large farms are relying on a board of directors or an advisory committee to help them make better decisions.

“In agriculture, we have this idea of ‘rugged individualism,” said Shout. “We’re really good at keeping things to ourselves. But we really need to get outside the box.

“I know everybody thinks they’re competing, but you don’t know what you don’t know, so talk to other farmers.”

The post How one farm put data analytics to work appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Winnipeg-based AGI announced Tuesday it had agreed to make a “minority equity investment” of US$15 million (C$19.57 million) in Farmobile, effective Wednesday.

Neither company said how much of an equity stake $15 million would buy, percentage-wise, but AGI noted the deal comes with the right to appoint two directors to Farmobile’s board.

Farmobile provides hardware and software for real-time collection, organization, analysis and storage of farm data, such as its PUC IoT (Internet of Things) device, which collects and streams agronomic and machine data from most makes and models of field equipment.

Data farmers collect through Farmobile equipment can be converted into standardized field records for sharing with trusted advisors or for monetizing through the Farmobile DataStore exchange, the company’s digital marketplace.

The Kansas City-area company’s revenue comes from Farmobile PUC subscriptions and data licensing.

Since launching PUC in 2014, Farmobile said it “has collected more point-by-point farm data, including detailed agronomic data for planting, harvesting, foraging, spraying, and spreading; field data; and location data, from more sources than anyone else in the industry.”

“Our investment in Farmobile substantially expands our technology platform and integrates automated data collection seamlessly within our IntelliFarms SureTrack farm management and grain exchange platform,” AGI CEO Tim Close said in the company’s release.

The SureTrack system — which came to AGI when it took over Missouri-based tech firm IntelliFarms in March — features suites of sensors “from the field to grain bins” allowing farmers to manage operations with real-time field activity data, grain handling, storage and conditioning equipment and marketing and price discovery options.

“Agriculture is evolving faster than ever before, and data is at the core of the progress we have made and the progress we will make in years to come,” Close said separately in Farmobile’s release Wednesday.

“The power of a company like Farmobile is that they enable access to insights that have previously been locked inside of machines or left in the field due to the challenge of data collection and transfer.”

“In a precision ag world, data is a crucial system of record for every pass on a field, which quickly turns into a system of orchestration to enable better in-field management decisions,” Farmobile CEO Jason Tatge said in that company’s release Wednesday.

“AGI understands that, so we are thrilled to have a partner and investor like AGI as we continue on our mission to help unlock the full potential of data in agriculture.”

AGI’s grain handling and storage equipment brands include Westfield, Wheatheart and AGI augers, Westeel and Twister bins and Batco and Hi Roller conveyors, among others. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Two years ago Monsanto paid $1 billion for Climate Corp., a firm that specializes in digitizing and aggregating a long list of data collected from farmers’ fields. The numbers are crunched and sold to farmers so they can make better agronomic decisions and more money.

It all started with yield monitors, GPS technology and yield maps and evolved to multiple layers of information from soil type and fertility to topography, rainfall, heat units and crop variety. That information is then connected to seeders and fertilizer and pesticide applicators to vary seeding rates and applications on the fly. Instead of treating a field all the same, inputs can be adjusted to suit conditions, in effect creating many fields within a field.

The technology behind precision agriculture and micro-agronomy, produces the information, which when aggregated across many fields, is big data.

Other large companies, including DuPont Pioneer and John Deere, are offering big data services. The focus has been on the United States, but Canada and Brazil top Climate Corp.’s expansion list.

Climate Corp.’s chief scientist David Fischhoff told Forbes in 2014 big data will change the face of agriculture.

“We can see things we’ve never seen and know things we’ve never known so we can tap more of the potential in every seed, every acre and every dollar we invest and use a new level of decision-making in the pursuit of higher yields,” a company video says.

Farmers’ view

Do farmers see it the same way? A farmer-panel on big data at the annual Manitoba Agronomists’ Conference Dec. 16 was cautious.

“It is worth something,” Roland farmer John Bergen said. “It’s not worth something yet. Our data is worth something too. In exchange for our data I guess we should have access to everyone else’s.”

Although farmers are skeptical about yield data, Bergen added, “I think big data can… take away some of those reasons not to believe,” if the variables are reduced.

What would interest Bergen? Being able to access 2015 soybean yields grown on similar soil to his, planted before the spring snow to see what impact, if any, seeding into cooler soils had.

“Once we can do that then I think we’re into something really good,” he said.

Adam Gurr, who farms at Rapid City and also does independent research through his company Agritruth Research, said he will likely buy big data services in the future, but mainly to access data management and analytical tools.

Dan Hacault of Swan River stressed that data from his own farm is what’s most important to him.

“For my farm it’s the small data I want,” he said. “It’s the stuff I collect for my own farm that’s more value to me than the amalgamation of a pile of data.”

Earlier in the conference Dan Frieberg of Premier Crop Systems in West Des Moines, Iowa also focused on the value of capturing data from individual fields and using it to assist the owner to make better agronomic decisions.

Big data is crude, but it’s better than it was, he said.

“We have to do better than averaging the responses from tiny plots and pretending that those results fit across huge spatial variability that exists within fields,” Frieberg said.

“Every agronomist and every farmer knows there are differences across their fields.

“The real key is let’s not pretend all this land is the same agronomically because it’s not, and we can use the equipment that growers have already invested in and help them with their data to do a better job of managing what they do in agronomy.”

Local data is important, said Dan Wright, Monsanto Canada’s trait launch lead, who is working on Climate Corp.’s Canadian expansion, but aggregated data can reveal important information too, he said. For example, based on data from 3,800 fields Climate Corp. found 10 per cent didn’t get enough nitrogen, costing the farmer an average of $54 an acre in reduced yield. It also found in 40 per cent of the fields too much nitrogen was applied costing producers an average of $13 an acre.

So besides boosting yields, collecting and analyzing data can help the environment. Nutrient run-off is attracting more government attention and regulation.

Show me

Only an estimated 10 per cent of Manitoba farmers are collecting data now from their entire farm, said Mitch Rezansoff, integrated solutions manager for John Deere dealer Enns Brothers. “Why aren’t more farmers doing it? It goes back to ‘show me the benefit,’” he said.

And that’s just what Rezansoff has been doing. On one farm he discovered operation overlaps totalling 200 acres, resulting in $24,000 worth of extra inputs being applied. Modifying the anhydrous ammonia application with sectional control saved $6,400, paying for itself in a year, he said.

Paying for sectional control on an air seeder, either factory installed or added later, was recoverable after three and four years.

In another case using yield maps Rezansoff found a 4,300-acre farmer had zero yield on 731 or 17 per cent of his acres over several years due to excess water. Topographical maps were used to see how to remove the water. If buying a used scraper to improve drainage could cut the lost acres to 200, it would pay for the scraper in one year, not including the time to do the work.

Better decisions

Speakers agreed more data will help farmers make better decisions and make them more efficient, more productive, sustainable and profitable.

“Like it or not big data is the new reality in farming,” Rezansoff said. “It’s here to stay. It will become more embedded into the equipment, the technology, the capabilities.”

What’s perhaps less clear is the extent farmers will focus on their data compared to what has been aggregated. It’s easy to imagine both. Either way farmers will have to see the value and be confident of the data itself.

Gurr said he’ll test recommendations based on pooled data on his farm before fully adopting them.

Bergen noted big data companies are focused on the U.S. Midwest, where crops and conditions are different from here. Firms will have to invest a lot to get the data necessary to build predictive models that apply to Western Canada, he said.

And while local and big data will become more important, farmers or their agronomists won’t be replaced.

“Farmers’ intuition is paramount,” Rezansoff said. “Can data replace the farmer’s experience and intuition? The answer is no. It complements it.”

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The non-binding principles are also meant to provide companies that collect, store and analyze farmer data some guidelines when crafting their service contracts and marketing tools that use farm data to boost crop yields or reduce costs for farmers.

“The principles released today provide a measure of needed certainty to farmers regarding the protection of their data,” said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which spearheaded the effort to craft industry wide standards on farm data.

Among the guidelines are assertions that farmers own information generated by their operations, farmers should be told how their data will be used and who it is shared with, and farmers should be able to opt out of services and have their data returned to them if they choose.

The principles were developed after a pair of meetings organized by the Farm Bureau since April with industry groups, including the American Soybean Association and National Corn Growers Association, and tech providers such as John Deere, DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto’s Climate Corporation.

Over the last year there has been a surge in the collection and analyses of farm data across the U.S. as companies roll out products that combine analysis of everything from the row spacing a farmer might use to plant corn, to the soil conditions of various spots in a field, and local weather patterns. The companies say there are big profits to be made in helping farmers increase crop production.

But some farmers worried that the data they share could be used against them. Some fear commodity markets and farmland values could be manipulated or exploited if the data winds up in the hands of traders or land brokers.

Others fear that large seed and chemical companies could use the information to sell more fertilizer and seeds.

— Karl Plume reports on agriculture and commodity markets for Reuters from Chicago.

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