Farmers Edge – Global, Integrated & Independent

Jamie JohansenAgribusiness, agronomy, Audio, Data, Farmers, Nutrient Management, Precision Planting

ams16-149-editedWhen it comes to precision data technology, farmers today have many choices. Farmers Edge was eager to share what sets them apart from the rest and how they strive to boost growers crop production without forgetting about the need for constant improvement in sustainability efforts.

Farmers Edge VP of Marketing, Marina Barnes, said, “We strongly believe you have to have an integrated approach in order to deliver a complete solution to your customers. Farmers Edge is independent and unbiased. We are not tied to any input or equipment sales. We were built from the ground up with insights from our farmers. We incorporated technology with an existing agronomic business model unlike typical precision ag companies. At Farmers Edge, we also believe that providing real boots on the ground to our clients is essential. That is why we work along out farmers every step of the way.”

Marina said that when a new customer comes on board, they “digitize the farm.” All customers get access to on-farm weather stations and FarmCommand, their integrated farm management platform.

Collecting all this data is really the simple part. Once you have all that data, what do you to with it? “At Farmers Edge, we are not focused on getting the right data just for the sake of visibility. We are focused on turning that data into decisions that can improve growers’ farming operation. We bridge the gap between boots on the ground and data-driven precision ag.”

Listen to my complete interview with Marina to learn more about Farmers Edge and their new decision support tool focused on nitrogen management. [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/ams-16-farmersedge-barnes.mp3″ text=”Interview with Marina Barnes, Farmers Edge”]

View and download photos from the event here: 2016 AMS Photo Album

Coverage of the Ag Media Summit is sponsored by
Coverage of the Ag Media Summit is sponsored by FMC   Coverage of the Ag Media Summit is sponsored by New Holland

Mavrx – The Uber of Aerial Imagery

Joanna SchroederAerial Imagery, Audio, InfoAg

Mavrx is working hard to become the Uber of aerial imagery. The company was showcasing it’s unique business for growers across the country during this year’s InfoAg conference that took place in St. Louis, Missouri. To learn more, Chuck Zimmerman stopped by Mavrx’s booth and spoke with Max Bruner to get an update on the company.

unnamed-3Bruner said that the company has taken a few years to get the science, the economics and the utility of imaging right. “And really this past year has been a critical year of scaling for us,” he said. “Really the message is that Mavrx is open for business across the country. We have a system that scales across pretty much entirety of U.S. corn, soybean and wheat production. Wherever you do business we’re ready to work with you,” added Bruner.

So how exactly does their Uber aerial imagery model work? Bruner explained that similar to Uber drivers who own their own cars, Mavrx doesn’t own the aircraft – the pilots do. They work within a dedicated imaging network. “We loan Mavrx proprietary equipment to them. They get an iPad. Mavrx runs the logistics from San Francisco where our headquarters is. Then we manage this aircraft network across the country.”

Out of over 40 airports Mavrx has over 100 pilots in their network and it operates both in an on-demand nature  and almost like an AT&T or Verizon infrastructure nature. “From us you buy an imagery plan and then we’re there for you when you need imagery all season long,” said Bruner.

Learn more about Mavrx’s aerial imagery services by listening to Chuck’s interview with Max here: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/infoag-16-mavrx-bruner.mp3″ text=”Interview with Max Bruner, Mavrx”]

2016 ICPA/InfoAg Photo Album

Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by
Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by John Deere   Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by CropTrak

John Deere Brings Farming to A Different Level

Kelly MarshallAgribusiness, Audio, InfoAg, John Deere

infoag-16-deere-kovarChuck Zimmerman had the chance to catch up with some team members from our John Deere sponsor at InfoAg in St. Louis last week.  Deanna Kovar is the Director of Production & Precision Ag Marketing at John Deere and it’s her job to bring solutions to the US and Canada.  Bringing solutions to growers is what Deere has been doing since the self-scouring plow, but of course, Kovar relates, it looks quite a bit different today!

Now precision agriculture generally means equipment, technology like GPS or variable rate, or increasing the precise location of seed and fertilizer– and that’s all part of what John Deere brings, but the company also views its dealer network as a component.  Dealers are part of harvesting data, Kovar explains.  And that data is used to help farmers make better decisions.

“Precision ag is relatively new to farming and our dealers really take precision farming to the last mile to make sure that it works for farmers, no matter what crops they’re growing, no matter what solutions they’re using on their farm, whether its a of all new John Deere equipment or a fleet of older, mixed color equipment, our dealers are really working hard to take the technologies we’re providing, connect those growers to their trusted advisors and really drive a different level of farming.”

“Nobody farms alone,” Kovar asserts.  John Deere knows this and has learned that building the best only goes so far.  Working with retailers, equipment manufacturers, software companies and many other areas of the industry are what take precision farming to the next level.

Listen to Chuck’s full interview here: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/infoag-16-deere-kovar.mp3″ text=”Interview with Deanna Kovar, John Deere”]

2016 ICPA/InfoAg Photo Album

Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by
Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by John Deere Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by CropTrak

#InfoAg16 Focus on Integration for @CropTrak

Cindy ZimmermanAudio, CropTrak, InfoAg

croptrak1Farm management information software company CropTrak had a lot to talk about at the InfoAg Conference this week in St. Louis.

CropTrak’s Aaron Hutchinson says they’ve had a lot of focus on integration with other companies this year. “One of them is CDMS,” he said. “This year they allowed us access to their chemical, crop protection and nutrient libraries and we’ve actually integrated that into our mobile and desktop tools.” Another collaboration is with The Weather Company as it is working agricultural weather information into its services.

Learn more about what’s new with CropTrak in this interview: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/infoag-16-croptrak-aaron.mp3″ text=”Interview with Aaron Hutchinson, CropTrak”]

2016 ICPA/InfoAg Photo Album

Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by
Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by John Deere   Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by CropTrak

2016 InterDrone Attracts 160 Drone Companies

Jamie JohansenAerial Application, Aerial Imagery, Agribusiness, Aviation, drone, UAS, UAV

Screen Shot 2016-08-04 at 11.45.11 AMBZ Media LLC unveiled the exhibition component of the industry’s largest dedicated commercial UAV show, InterDrone. More than 130 exhibitors have already signed up for the event taking place September 7-9 at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. The exhibition will be paired with more than 120 sessions on all aspects of UAV design, piloting, regulations, and business management.

Exhibitors and sponsors include a cross section of the entire commercial drone industry including AeroVironment, DJI, Precision Hawk, Yuneec, Intel, SenseFly, Insitu, DroneDeploy, NovaTel, 3D Robotics, eHang, Autel, AUVSI, Hubsan, C-Astral, Brother, Walkera, SlantRange, Kodak, Flir, Parrot, AEGis Technologies, Sentera, and pavilions from Iowa, North Dakota and Nevada.

Michael P. Huerta, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, will give the Grand Opening Keynote address on September 7 at 10:30 am. He will be joined at InterDrone by a high-level lineup of commercial drone thought leaders who will frame the state of the industry for the more than 4,000 attendees expected at the conference, including Tian Yu, and Chris Anderson, founders of Yuneec and 3D Robotics respectively.

DroneLife.com said, “We partner with many great conference and event providers in the drone market. But one has jumped out of the proverbial gate faster than all others: InterDrone. Only in its second year, InterDrone has become the CES (or Comdex for you old guys) of the new drone economy. This year’s event provides a vast tapestry of drone topics and knowledge sharing…”

“Attendance is running well ahead of last year at this time and more than 245 media and association partners on six continents are helping to drive awareness of InterDrone and building it into the premier ‘Big Tent’ commercial drone event in the world,” said Ted Bahr, InterDrone Chairman.

For information on exhibiting or event sponsorships, please contact Ted Bahr at ted@bzmedia.com or 631-421-4158 x101.

Precision Ag Awards Presented at #InfoAg16

Cindy ZimmermanAward, InfoAg

PrecisionAg Executive Editor Paul Schrimpf presents award to Dr. Brian Arnell, OSU

PrecisionAg Executive Editor Paul Schrimpf presents award to Dr. Brian Arnell, OSU

The PrecisionAg Institute was celebrating a decade of the PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence at this year’s InfoAg Conference in St. Louis. The winners each year have devoted their careers to the technology that improves crop production stewardship, agronomy, and efficiency and this year was no different.

The 2016 Educator/Researcher of the Year is Dr. Brian Arnall, Associate Professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Oklahoma State University. His program focuses on implementing precision ag technologies and nutrient management with emphasis on site-specific techniques.

The 2016 Legacy Award was presented posthumously to Dr. Marvin Stone who was a Regents Professor at Oklahoma State University (OSU) for 24 years, lecturing in the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering department. During his time at OSU, he authored nearly 100 papers, received millions of dollars in grants, and taught legions of young, aspiring engineers while mentoring and advising dozens of graduate students across multiple disciplines. Tragically, Marvin and his wife Bonnie died on October 24 last year after being struck by an automobile following the OSU Homecoming Parade.

PrecisionAg Farmer of the Year – Craige Mackenzie of New Zealand

PrecisionAg Farmer of the Year – Craige Mackenzie of New Zealand

The 2016 PrecisionAg Farmer of the Year is Craige Mackenzie, a dairy and crop farmer from Methven, New Zealand. In 2010, Craige and daughter, Jemma, established Agri-Optics Ltd., New Zealand’s first precision agriculture service company providing precision ag tools and services to NZ farming systems with a focus on field sensing (crop sensing and Electro Magnetic soil surveying) and spatial data management solutions.

The Crop Adviser/Entrepreneur of the Year award went to Ag Partners, LLC which provides products, services and market access in the areas of grain, agronomy, feed, and petroleum. The Iowa-based company has developed and manages InSiteCDM, acrop data management program that helps producers maximize profits and make more efficient inputs.

2016 ICPA/InfoAg Photo Album

Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by John Deere Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by CropTrak

Ag Leader Says It’s All About Connectivity

Kelly MarshallAg Leader, Agribusiness, InfoAg, Software

Ag Leader Russ Mormon works in marketing for Ag Leader and spends a lot of his time at events like this week’s InfoAg Conference. Talking to that many growers has given him a pretty good idea of what farmers are looking for, and right now he says everyone’s asking about connectivity.

That suits Mormon just fine, since Ag Leader is well equipped to meet those needs. Their cloud-based software platform, AgFiniti, has everything needed to make an operation run smoothly, including remote access and control of a machine’s monitor. And if your monitor needs an upgrade, well Ag Leader is ready for that too.

Mormon also hears a lot of questions about their SMS software and its ability to communicate with a variety of third parties. He assures me users can expect to be able to import, export and otherwise connect with many systems.

“What makes SMS software great is the fact that we can do that.  If a guy has a mixed fleet, he’s got some green stuff, some yellow stuff, some red stuff, he only needs one software on his computer at home to make it all work together.”

Learn more about what’s new with Ag Leader in my full interview: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/infoag-Ag_Leader-_Mormon-2016.mp3″ text=”Interview with Russ Mormon, Ag Leader”]

2016 ICPA/InfoAg Photo Album

Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by
Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by John Deere Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by CropTrak

Democratic Ag, Energy and Environmental Platform

Kelly MarshallAg Group, Government

GOP PlatformLast week the American Soybean Association helpfully took apart the Republic platform as it pertains to agriculture, energy and the environment for those of us without the motivation or time to read the manuscript ourselves.  Now the Democrats have released their platform and ASA has once again summarized the information.

Biodiesel – No specific mention of biodiesel, but discusses clean energy and clean fuels.  Promotes “clean energy leadership and collaborative stewardship of our natural resources, while expanding opportunities in rural communities across America.” Also plans to extend tax credit for clean energy.

Conservation – states the party will provide assistance to producers using conservation practices and notes the benefits of working cooperatively with growers.

Farm Safety Net – States their commitment to providing a “focused safety net to assist family operations that need support during challenging times.”

Hunger and Nutrition – Committed to protecting “proven programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) … that help struggling families put food on the table.” Also opposes the block-granting of the SNAP program.

Infrastructure Investment – Outlines plans for “rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure,” specifically roads, bridges, and freight rail lines and waterways. It also calls for the creation of a national infrastructure bank to focus on infrastructure improvements, and the permanent establishment of Build America Bonds to spur investment at the state and local levels.

Rural Broadband – The platform commits to bringing high-speed internet connectivity to “every household in America.”

Trade – The document neither supports nor opposes TPP.  It does contains language on trade, referencing a desire to “review agreements negotiated years ago to update them,” and to not take “shortcuts on labor policy or the environment.” The platform includes language on currency manipulation and dumping calls for an end to both the travel ban and the trade embargo with Cuba.

Waters of the U.S. – The Clean Water Act refers only to mining discharge. There is no mention of the WOTUS rule.

You can read the document in its entirety here.

AgGateway Launches ADAPT Version 1

Joanna SchroederAgribusiness, Audio, Connectivity, InfoAg, John Deere, Software, technology

AgGateway is getting ready to launch version 1 of its ADAPT software solution to the agriculture industry. The announcement was made during this year’s InfoAg that took place in St. Louis, Missouri this week. The AgGateway consortium was founded to address eConnectivity needs in agriculture as the industry develops and adopts more powerful tools to increase efficiency and productivity. One way this is being achieved is through data exchange. Earlier this year AgGateway announced new standards, models and other resources that will improve the ability of growers to easily manage their data and the organization’s progress in these areas was featured during the show.

AgGatewayTo learn more, Chuck Zimmerman spoke with John Deere’s Chip Donahue. John Deere is one of the founding companies, along with more than a dozen more, of AgGateway. Donahue said they are getting ready to launch version one of ADAPT, the open-source Agricultural Data Application Programming Toolkit. He said that the program was first made available to the public in February and it’s a data model with the ability to convert from one format, such as a John Deere format into a Case format into an ISO format.

“The program simplifies the ability to exchange data between systems whether its from a machine into a software system or between software systems,” explained Donahue.

Donahue highlighted some of the resources that AgGateway provides including:

  • ADAPT is being adopted by Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) developers and terminal manufacturers;
  • AgGateway Core Documents for Field Operations been made available through the ADAPT data model and continue to be enhanced;
  • Documentation from the Standardized Precision Ag Data Exchange (SPADE) Project for interoperability; and
  • New irrigation standards from the Precision Ag Irrigation Language (PAIL) Project for better irrigation management.

The organization is also working in other areas including crop scouting, crop nutrition, telematics and commodity grain movement. AgGateway is currently in the process of testing plug-ins and then licensing those to the organization’s software partners. Donahue said that the technology is open-source so it’s available globally for anyone to use and they are promoting ADAPT to the software industry.

Learn more about ADAPT and the work of AgGateway in Chuck’s interview with Donahue here: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/infoag-16-deere-donahue.mp3″ text=”Interview with Chip Donahue, John Deere”]

2016 ICPA/InfoAg Photo Album

Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by
Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by John Deere Coverage of the InfoAg Conference is sponsored by CropTrak

Future of Ag – What Will Have Biggest Impact?

Jamie JohansenZimmPoll

zp-nh1Our latest ZimmPoll asked the question, “Is the Clinton-Kaine Democratic ticket good for agriculture and/or energy?”

I am not quite sure this week’s pollers have anymore confidence in the Clinton-Kaine team when it come to agricultural and energy issues. Clinton has backed biotech, the Farm Bill, animal welfare, climate and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). And Kaine seems somewhere in the middle. However, our poll shows a split. I suppose time will tell all.

Here are the poll results:

  • Good for ag & biofuels – 43%
  • Good for ag but not for biofuels – 0%
  • Good for biofuels but not for ag – 5%
  • Not good for ag & biofuels – 33%
  • Could go either way – 19%
  • Other – 0%

Our new ZimmPoll is live and asks the question, What will play the biggest role in the future of agriculture?

The 2016 InfoAg Conference is a wrap, yet we still have a bunch of precision technology info to share with you in the coming week. Jack Uldrich, acclaimed global futurist, speaker and best-selling author keynoted this year’s ag techfest sharing thoughts on what the world may look like in just a few short years. So, what do you feel will play the largest role in the future of agriculture…biotech, big data, social media? Share your thoughts.