How does a farmer get useful and impactful datasets out of the farm? Kris Kinnaird, Marketing Manager for Farmers Edge says it's important to reduce the amount of data entry and utilize a universal terminal.
We all know that becoming a better farmer in the 21st century means understanding and utilizing your datasets. The problem is that for an average farmer, the myriad of datasets available is overwhelming rather than useful. The Farmers Edge platform attempts to integrate all the data to help farmers make impactful decisions that grow their profitability.
“Who does this data benefit? Ultimately, it benefits the farmer, but there is potential for that data to benefit everybody. The farmer is the owner of that dataset. We at Farmers Edge are just trying to help you access and collect that data in a most efficient way,” Kinnaird said. “You can provide access to some other folks like agronomists, like insurance agents and reap the benefits as you work alongside them or have them working for you.”
The key to the Farmers Edge platform is making a plan, which is one of two areas of manual inputs that a farmer customer must manage. The plan will include things like supply purchases, equipment prep, insurance sign ups, and manpower requirements, but also will utilize GPS data to locate and map your fields.
After the plan, the second place a farmer must input data into the system is by creating jobs. Farmers Edge platform can track the date a field was planted, fertilized and sprayed, including the amounts and the costs of each input, but only if the farmer creates jobs for these operational tracking tasks.
For the rest of the growing season, Farmers Edge does all the work. Yield predictions, growth stage modeling, weather forecasts and more are all available per field to help farmers manage every bit of information available to increase their bottom line.
Also important, according to Kinnaird, is that the Farmers Edge platform utilizes a universal terminal, so farmers do not have to add one more screen in the cab and limit their visibility. The Farmers Edge platform will work on whatever existing terminals you might already have installed.
Finally, after reviewing the data, Farmers Edge can help farmers analyze their profitability for the year.
To summarize, Kris said, “Data leads to insights leads to ultimate action or decision. Data collection needs to be automatic. The weather station, the satellite imagery, etc needs to flow into the platform automatically so that the farmer doesn’t have to waste time managing a USB stick or uploading this information into a platform to have that data processed and then have limited capabilities between different brands.”
Farmers Edge wants to enable farmer decisions to happen more effectively and efficiently to drive profitability.
“My goal is to train our customers and our farmers how to use these insights so that they can take action and make decisions with our support, but using it on their own,” he said.
Farmers Edge is a Canadian company that has worked with farmers for 15 years in six different countries using one global digital platform. Farmers Edge provides hardware, software, agronomy, and support.
—--
Precision Ag Reviews hosts reviews of Farmers Edge products like the FarmCommand on our website. See how farmers reviewed the FarmCommand.
Comments