The Top 10 People In Precision Agriculture

Precision agriculture — with all its wacky technologies and advanced algorithms and such — remains a people business. So, without further adieu, on the pages ahead are the Top 10 people (in alphabetical order) we feel are driving precision agriculture adoption forward in 2016.

Be sure to also check out these top 10 lists:

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1. Wade Barnes, Farmers Edge, CEO

Wade Barnes Farmers Edge using FarmCommand

Farmers Edge, led by CEO Wade Barnes, has nearly 300 employees who specialize in everything from data science to hardware engineering, to soil science and sustainability.

Fresh out of ag school and working as an agronomist at the local co-op, Farmers Edge (Winnipeg, MB) CEO Wade Barnes bore witness to the first wave of precision agriculture adoption in his native Canada basically fall flat on its face, and he says that experience still drives him as his VRT-focused outfit ascends to the top of the Canadian precision ag data management realm.

“I saw guys spending $50 an acre to get a $10 return; I saw precision at its earliest stages (in Canada) and I saw it essentially fail,” he recalls of his early days consulting on acres in Western Canada.

Barnes ended up moving on to an independent cooperative a little further south near the Manitoba/North Dakota border, where he worked on remote sensing applications in high nitrogen sugar beet fields.

“It made me rethink the whole strategy and see all the things that we had done wrong in the first wave,” he remembers. “I could see that grid-sampling didn’t really make a ton of sense.”

Today, Farmers Edge has nearly 300 employees who specialize in everything from data science to hardware engineering, to soil science and sustainability.

“Field-centric weather is by far the most important (form of weather data), because everybody right now is making promises around taking this data and moving more towards ‘decision ag’,” Barnes says. “The problem is, everybody is trying to tap into this public weather data set, because there’s an infrastructure there and it’s free.

“Well, this data is coming from 30 miles away — weather is so variable, you can’t use data from a weather station 30 miles away to create a predictive model on fungicide (application). It doesn’t work. If you’re off by five or six days, you could cost that farmer thousands”

Teddy Bekele

Teddy Bekele, Vice President of IT at WinField Solutions, spends a lot of his time managing and developing the company’s R7 Tool.

2. Teddy Bekele, WinField U.S., Vice President of Information Technology

Having left the tech world three and a half years ago to join WinField/Land O’Lakes to lead information technology at the Minnesota-based conglomerate, Teddy Bekele’s path to inclusion on our Top 10 People list perhaps took a bit of a different track than many of his counterparts.

“I was born in Ethiopia and my dad was a farmer when I was first born. A couple years after I was born he lost all of his land to a dictator that had decided all farmland now belonged to the government,” Bekele says. “So my father got out of farming, but then he went and sold crop protection products for Bayer (and other companies) for 20 years, but he always told me to stay out of farming.”

His father’s career advice aside, today Bekele spends a good chunk of his day-to-day managing and developing WinField’s R7 Tool. Mobile device compatibility was one of many areas that he made sure WinField stayed focused on as they worked towards R7’s development.

“We said ‘Hey there’s a real opportunity now because people are carrying these devices (iPads, tablets, mobile phones), now we can get R7 to a bigger audience’, and it’s a simple way that we can go to the field, quickly bring up that field and then with just a couple clicks get some insight about what is going on with the field.”

Going forward, Bekele and his team plan to continue focusing on improving the immediacy of the R7 Tool’s impact.

“We’re going to continue down the path of leveraging imagery better, so we’ve got a tool now coming out that actually looks at low-resolution imagery, so say you’re an agronomist and today you’ve got 50 fields to look at. How do you zero down on the three to four fields you need to focus on? It kind of gives you these fields are trending up, these fields are trending down, and you decide which ones you want to look at.”

Robb Fraley

Robb Fraley, Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto.

3. Dr. Robb Fraley, Monsanto, Chief Technology Officer

This should come as a surprise to basically nobody, but Dr. Robb Fraley is a very busy man.

On the day we reached Dr. Fraley he had just returned to Monsanto’s world headquarters in St. Louis, MO, from trying to turn around the narrative on GMOs at a food industry conference in Boulder, CO, and was preparing to head to California the next day to meet with 300-400 startups looking for venture capital funding.

Such is a day in the life when you head up technology for one of U.S. ag’s largest (and most vilified) companies. Another recent development that is keeping Fraley quite busy is the news that Monsanto is teaming up with Microsoft to pledge $92 million to help fund agribusiness startups in Brazil.

“Ag in Brazil is important to us, and the ability to participate in this VC fund is pretty exciting,” Dr. Fraley says. “We’ve had a long seven or eight year collaboration with the Gates foundation developing drought tolerant corn for Africa. Africa will be one of the hardest hit countries by drought in the coming decades and corn is the major carb in Africa.”

Fraley is also excited about the coming debut of Monsanto’s first RNAi-based product offering, which he describes as “a new corn rootworm trait to help farmers manage insects.”

“We’ve got some other cool things going on from the bio(logicals) side,” he adds. “We’re doing a lot of work with microbes, figuring out how can we improve soil health and crop growth by using microbes. As humans we all have a microbiome, and the same is true of a corn or tomato plant. We’re looking at using advances in data to improve yields by making sure the right microbe is right there next to the plant, where it needs to be.”

4. Dr. John Fulton, The Ohio State University, Associate Professor

Dr. John Fulton with Paul Schrimpf and Elliott Nowels

Now with The Ohio State University, Dr. John Fulton (center) earned the PrecisionAg Educator of the Year award in 2013 while he was at Auburn University.

Having already been honored as our 2013 Precision Ag Educator of the Year winner during his tenure at Auburn University, the ties between PrecisionAg.com and Dr. John Fulton have only grown stronger with his 2015 return to his home state as an associate professor at The Ohio State University.

Since Fulton’s LeBron-esque return, all he has done is introduce the first Kinze 4900 series multi-hybrid planter to the state (as far as we know Columbus area grower Jim Case has the other 4900 in Ohio), as well as develop an algorithm that can automatically adjust planter depth as it rolls across the field and encounters different soil types and real-time soil moisture readings.

Weaving together a soil-texture map and data from planter-mounted soil moisture sensors, Fulton hopes the algorithm will help Ohio growers with one of the most important, but also one of the most challenging aspects of Buckeye State agronomy: getting a good emergence in Ohio’s cold and damp spring soils.

“As in-field conditions vary, the technology will automatically adjust to maintain the target depth,” Fulton told Agriculture.com recently. “As it improves, we see this system placing seed at a depth where soil moisture is present for quicker emergence. Uniform emergence is our goal, allowing full benefit of new precision seeding technologies.”

Gregg Sauder Yield Center 360

Yield Center 360, led by Founder and President Gregg Sauder, launched several new products in 2016.

5. Gregg Sauder, Yield Center 360, Founder & President

Yield Center 360 (Morton, IL) released some interesting new products to market in 2016, including the promising in-field, no-wait portable soil nitrate lab system known as the 360 SoilScan, and Gregg Sauder’s reputation as a relentless innovator (he was with Precision Planting prior to the Monsanto takeover) continues to grow. In June the company announced a distribution agreement with the biggest of the big boys, John Deere.

“Demand for the 360 Yield Center nitrogen utilization products is tremendous. That’s why we are pleased with this allied distribution agreement with Deere,” Sauder said at the time. “We can now service and support more customers through the broadcast dealer network in the U.S. and Canada.”

A distro deal with Deere certainly spells good fortunes going forward for Sauder and his growing startup.

Joe Tevis, Topcon Precision Agriculture

Joe Tevis has prominent roles at Topcon Precision Agriculture, AgGateway, and Vis Consulting.

6. Joe Tevis, Vis Consulting, Inc./AgGateway/Topcon Precision Agriculture

Joe Tevis, Director, Agronomic Services and Products, Topcon, represents Topcon on two data standards groups, as well as at AgGateway, where he serves as chair of the SPADE project and also serves on the AEF/ISO DDMA committee.

He is also the President and Founder of Vis Consulting, Inc., (Minneapolis, MN), a firm “dedicated to open collaboration and improving the quality and value of agricultural data….for all stakeholders.”

Tevis was also named a co-recipient of the PrecisionAg Legacy Award in 2014.

Kip Tom

Farmer Kip Tom (right) and Kurt Calvert look at the Fieldscripts technology on an iPad at Tom Farms. Photo: Bill Shaw/WTIU News

7. Kip Tom, Tom Farms, Owner

If you’ve been on the farm show circuit for any length of time in the past five years, you’ve probably heard a Kip Tom presentation. And it looks like Tom will be returning to the farm show circuit in due time, as the career farmer’s first-time bid for election to U.S. Congress in Indiana’s 3rd District was unfortunately halted in the Republican Primary stage. The mere fact that Tom was asked to run for elected office by his Leesburg, IN, constituents demonstrates his dynamic and engaging leadership qualities.

We predict he’ll be back (he never really left) to making waves in the precision ag world in no time.

8. Marc Vanacht, Ag Business Consultants, Principal

Marc Vanacht

Marc Vanacht sees more driverless equipment and greater acceptance of robotics — similar to the adoption timeline of these same technologies in the defense tech world — coming soon.

Marc Vanacht’s extensive experience working internationally for Monsanto gives him a unique perspective on the future of precision ag technologies. Part futurist, part precision ag consultant, Vanacht sees more driverless equipment and greater acceptance of robotics — similar to the adoption timeline of these same technologies in the defense tech world — coming soon.

“We have seen precision focused mostly on agronomy — variable rate application, seed variety selection — but there is so much more to be done in the areas of automation and robotics. We really haven’t seen anything yet. Precision ag is going to become mainstream and it will go around the world.”

9. Matt Waits, SST Software, CEO

Matt Waits With Paul Schrimpf

SST Software CEO Matt Waits (right) is often asked for his industry insight and perspective, just as he was in this recent interview with PrecisionAg Executive Editor Paul Schrimpf.

The ubiquitous leader (seriously, this guy is everywhere) of the Stillwater, OK-based Farm Management Information Systems top dog, SST Software,  Matt Waits and his team recently announced the launch of a new Sirrus app for the iPhone, as well as software integrations with sensor tech outfit Sentera and crop protection product database giant CDMS.

“No one cares how cool your new app, product, or service is if it is not compatible with the rest of their things they are doing,” Waits adds. “This is the single biggest stumbling block in our industry and one SST is actively working to solve. No single company can provide the total package for the market, so we must find a way to seamlessly integrate a series of specialized applications in order to provide agronomists and growers with a holistic solution.”

Waits is also excited about coming-soon API connections within agX and the growing promise SST Analytics has shown.

10. Brent Wiesenburger, South Dakota Wheat Growers (SDWG), Precision Ag Manager

SDWG Bret Weisenburger

Brent Wiesenburger (left) heads up South Dakota Wheat Growers’ MZB Technologies Precision Farming System, which SDWG field agronomists use to set up management zones and make nutrient recommendations.

Growing up on his family’s small grain farm, learning to fix equipment from his auto mechanic father, Brent Wiesenburger’s path to precision ag industry relevance began in 1995 at his current employer where he got his feet wet as a custom applicator.

“We started ‘dabbling’ with precision technology in 1995,” he recalls. “I converted my single bin spreader over from a straight rate applicator to a variable rate applicator using a Raven control system and an Ashtech Aim Navigation System. This was the first custom application machine at Wheat Growers to have a GPS system in it. From that time on I worked very closely with agronomists, them having the agronomy knowledge, myself learning the computer and software side.”

Today, Wiesenburger heads up SDWG’s MZB Technologies Precision Farming System, which SDWG field agronomists use to set up management zones and make nutrient recommendations.

“This is a very dynamic space right now and watching our technology grow and connect to other tools to bring further value to our customers is very exciting,” Wiesenburger admits. “To think that we have helped drive adoption and use of tools such as multi-hybrid planting, as well as variable rate planting matched to productivity zones and yield goals, is really cool.”

The kid that started out fixing tractors and combines with his father on the family farm predicts the next big technology shift in farming will occur in the sensor space.

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