Nailing Down The Value Of Data

Norris planter

Many stakeholders believe grower data can be a goldmine of information, but there’s still a host of factors limiting the payoff.

There’s been quite a dust-up in the past few years about who owns a grower’s data and what agriculture technology providers (ATPs) can do with it. It reached the point where the American Farm Bureau stepped in, leading efforts to draw up guidelines for use of producers’ information in 2014. But just what’s so great about data that everyone wants it?

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PrecisionAg® magazine reached out to a number of consultants and growers to see how they measure the value of data. They agreed there are monetary benefits in higher yields and saved input costs. Then too, more precise practices and use of products makes sense for the environment.

Our contacts also agreed that yield data was the Holy Grail, the most important information collected. Some called it a score card, a report card of everything that went before in the season. And as such, how it’s interpreted impacts future agronomic decisions — from variable-rate seeding recommendations to nutrient tracking to simply picking the best variety, says Steve Cubbage, President, Prime Meridian, Nevada, MO.

Tim Norris, Ag InfoTech

Tim Norris, Ag InfoTech

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Planting data came right behind yield information in value. As Tim Norris, CEO of Ag Info Tech LLC, Mount Vernon, OH, puts it: “Planting is the most important job we can do as a grain farmer. If we don’t find issues and correct them during planting, we have limited our yield potential right from the start.”

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In fact, Norris says producers can do much better collecting data at planting. Thanks to displays with Internet connections, I envision a day when growers can automatically collect and record current weather conditions. In addition, sensors on the planter could automatically collect soil temperature and moisture.

Yield data gets more valuable when it’s supplemented with planter ride, downforce, seeding accuracy, and crop input application information, says Cubbage. “We’re not getting the whole picture,” he worries. “That’s a shame because we’re missing out on what could be some easy answers to manage crops.”

But isn’t there “low value” data in an operation? Definitely not, agreed our contacts, provided it’s quality data.

In fact, a few growers are shooting to record everything that happens in a field. Most recently, Grower Steve Pitstick, Maple Park, IL, began documenting the footprints of machine operations in his fields — movement of tillage units, grain carts, etc. The idea is to look at all the impacts of compaction on yield, to correlate it to imagery or to whatever measure he can.

Norris has clients that have been collecting information on both tillage and grain cart trips and sees traffic patterns show up in row-by-row downforce maps. Having these layers of information can help identify what caused the patterns and possible field problems.

Pitstick admits he might not find value in all data collected today, but in the future event that he can, he says that with such stored information, he’ll be ahead of his peers.

Nathan Wentworth, Wentworth Farms

Nathan Wentworth, Wentworth Farms

Indeed, Nathan Wentworth, Wentworth Farms, Warrensburg, IL, says that looking back, he wishes he had collected certain data sooner. He won’t label anything as low value if he can gather it easily, economically and accurately. He envisions a time when he’ll be able to analyze it and potentially make actionable decisions with it.

Wentworth is also focused on improving how he collects data. “We have made a significant investment into the Precision Planting and FieldView platforms to improve the simplicity and accuracy of our planting and yield data,” he says. “We’ve been impressed with FieldView and are very excited to gather all of our field data through this platform in the not too distant future.”

Quality The Biggest Limitation

While data may be valuable, growers can face real struggles collecting it right. A number of our experts believe the biggest limitation of data today is its quality.

Jeremy Wilson, Technology Specialist for Crop IMS, Effingham, IL, seriously questions the quality of the data collected by the average grower. “We’re creating mountains, and we’ve got more big data solutions that are going to take these mountains and bring us solutions and answers. But if it’s junk, what do we have to gain?” he says. “I think too many big data solutions are not giving any credit to the quality of data they may be getting, and I don’t know how to address it.”

Poor education by the industry ranked high as a reason for bad data. “Growers are promised things that their monitors and systems can produce and all the things they can do with data. But no one teaches them what it takes to produce good data that can actually be used in making decisions,” says Ben Flansburg, BCA Ag Technologies, Medina, NY. Too many times, the customers’ mounds of data he sees aren’t useable, the problems caused because something wasn’t calibrated or parameters were not set correctly.

There haven’t been incentives to do a good job calibrating because growers just don’t know what they’ll do with the data produced anyway, says Pitstick. “Kind of like the chicken and the egg,” he notes. But as systems become easier to calibrate, quality will get better.

Prime Meridian’s Cubbage has found information submitted to firms for analysis is generally unorganized, uncalibrated, and typically missing large chunks of valuable data.  “This is the reality on the ground, and growers and agri-professionals are, in my opinion, not addressing this serious issue,” he says. “Properly collecting a foundational data set such as where different varieties are planted, and what population they are planted at, then collecting calibrated yield data at the end is not the norm.” He adds that the problems are seriously holding back the industry, including the potential promised by Big Data.

Other production information pieces — such as rainfall, planting locations and planting dates — needed for decision-making are missing as well. If yield data is the report card, then all that’s gone before is the lesson plan, says Pitstick. But most growers don’t carefully record the lesson plan. “Guys keep track of stuff on a clipboard on a tractor or a calendar in the shop,” he says. “But that doesn’t do much good because it’s not spatial, it’s not anything we can look at on a digitized map. It’s very hard to do analysis on those parts of the lesson plan that aren’t digitized.”

More Limitations

Beyond quality, the value of data is being limited by a number of other factors today. Take growers’ attitudes. Crop IMS’ Wilson believes producers have to see that the field computer in their tractor recording data is just as important as the planter or combine — and if it breaks down, they need to fix it immediately, just as they would other equipment.

How many growers have this mindset? Wilson puts the figure at just 10%, his father being among them. Like Pitstick, Grower Wade Wilson does whatever it takes to record “every single thing that happens on his farm.”

Pitstick believes farmers have not truly been shown the value of data. And in today’s economy most are just focused on surviving. They’ll have to “play another day,” himself included. “We can learn a lot of things from good data, but we’ve got to wanna,” he says.

Another value limitation is the level of detail growers can see in their data. “Currently my yield maps are at 10-meter resolution, and soil test results around 100-meter. This level of detail is similar to that of satellite maps — which I have found are kind of like looking through a blurry lens,” says Pitstick. “I can tell something is wrong but not with enough detail to help find cause for low-yielding areas within a field.”

As for soil tests, he takes them every four years on a 100-meter-square, with a repeatability of perhaps only 60% to 70%. “We’re making lots of big-dollar assumptions off of sketchy data,” he says.

How high can the level of detail go? Ag Info Tech’s Norris would like to gather data on a row-by-row basis, but GIS systems don’t have the horsepower to deal with row-by-row and drone imagery.

Along the same lines, the spatial size of harvest data is a huge limitation, he says. Most harvesters today are 30 to 40 feet wide, which loses all row-by-row analytics. “I can see a day where yield maps accurately deliver row-by-row infrared data,” Norris says.

BCA Ag Technologies’ Flansburg expects that, too: Row-by-row — to even plant-by-plant yield measures. Such detail will allow growers to dig deeper into finding what produces high yields and what the big limiting factors are.

Also on the horizon is new value from data supplied by UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and on-the-go sensors, such as AgLeader’s OptRx, or Topcon’s CropSpec.

Wentworth Farms’ Wentworth believes the greatest limitation on the value of data lies in its analysis. Growers have proven they will spend money on equipment and software to gather data, but not many are analyzing it to make better decisions. Why? It’s too complicated and takes too much time.

Data analysis has to be as easy as one mouse click or tap on an iPad to quickly generate an easy-to-read report that will give a farmer an idea of what is — or isn’t — driving yield on his farm, says Wentworth. Reports should be easily customizable (i.e., yield X soil type X hybrid). And a producer should be able to do the work from anywhere in the world, via the Web, not only on the computer at home that contains the analysis software. “I think we are definitely heading in the right direction, but it’s hard to be patient,” he says.

Late precision adopters in the market, raised in a time when Google serves up 4.2 million results in .02 seconds, are not the most patient. The invasion of consumer electronics into the precision space has added to the problem. The industry is struggling to provide that instant gratification piece that customers are looking for, says Crop IMS’ Wilson.

One factor that limits data collection and analysis tremendously is compatibility of ag hardware/software platforms, adds Wentworth Farms’ Wentworth. Standardization here is making some progress, especially thanks to the efforts of AgGateway’s SPADE project.

Manufacturers’ Role

Many growers have become disheartened about the disconnect between what ATPs promise and the value users actually experience.

Flansburg combine

Many growers have become disheartened about the disconnect between what ATPs promise and the value users actually experience.

“We expect growers to just get it, but it’s complicated and not getting any simpler,” says Prime Meridian’s Cubbage. “Nobody ever wrote the Precision Handbook for Dummies. Maybe it’s about time, because the industry never took the time to educate growers and retailers on how to connect the precision dots. The entire industry needs to look themselves in the mirror. We’ve assumed too much — way too much.”

He believes the industry needs to come together and put together unbiased and simplified educational programs for growers. “Don’t just throw technology out there like red meat,” he emphasizes. “We can do better.”

Some don’t take tech providers to task quite so strongly and credit companies with trying at least to listen to customers’ needs. Crop IMS’ Wilson is one such stakeholder. “The harsh reality is you’ve got big companies, more importantly, venture capital companies now, that dove into this ag data space, and they’re still trying to figure out what’s going to be the cash cow of this ag data business. They’re saying, ‘Wait a minute, if I do this and this, am I cutting off a revenue stream that maybe I haven’t thought of yet today?’”

Wilson believes companies newer to the industry have “raised the tide for us all” and brought a reason for the grower to record more planting data. Precision Planting, for instance, brought a new tool that collected new information about operations. And as growers/retailers move into using more advanced sensors, the bar will rise again. “I think it’s going to be easier for us to show the value of that data to the grower,” he says.

Wilson does admit that most manufacturers of the emerging UAV technologies think their products are “the white knight that’s going to save the world.” But the industry just doesn’t have enough knowledge yet about what the information generated really means — and what to do with it.

Ag Info Tech’s Norris says it’s easy for growers and dealers to sit on the sidelines and wish that all of the features they want and need are on a display. The problem is it all costs money.

Norris learned that first-hand as he brought his AgriVault software to the market. As soon as people see it, they want more features. The fact is that sometimes something that seems simple can cause a whole system rebuild. He believes the best thing manufacturers can do is under-promise and over-deliver.

A help here will be a high level of honesty, support and communication between manufacturers and growers: Honesty about capabilities and limitations of their products. Quick, reliable support to keep growers running in the field, to keep the data stream flowing.

Grower Wentworth believes communication with farmers is essential to developing new products and fine-tuning existing ones. He knows there are knowledgeable, tech-savvy, forward-thinking farmers who are willing to come alongside manufacturers to provide advice and test their products.” Manufacturers should make these farmer relationships a priority and compensate them accordingly,” he says.

BCA Ag Technologies’ Flansburg says that it all comes back to “just education.” He too often hears that a grower bought something, but has no idea how to use it. “There are agronomic reasons why this stuff is beneficial,” he says. “We need to teach that message in order to use our precision hardware to its capability and produce good, usable data.”

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Avatar for Ian Yule Ian Yule says:

Interesting article and highlights many of the issues. Chicken and egg around getting farmers to collect high quality data. Is an interesting one, but I don’t think many people really understand big data, and we certainly don’t have the analytics in place. We need to understand the difference between data and information, get our heads around customers desire for visualisation etc. timeframe might not be right for investors looking to make a quick buck or a big buck as work required to bring about change is totally underestimated. Change is going to be constant and rapid which will also have an effect on the potential profitability of such ventures. I like the comment about white knights, illustrates the problem about lack of understanding.