Don't Let Computers be Your Agronomist

I’ve seen more than a few spectacular failures when trying to apply modern technology to acre-level yield predictions and agronomic recommendations.

There’s never been more interest in “AgTech” but I remain a skeptic that remote sensing/algorithms/etc can accurately track and account for all of the micro-variables that go into producing your crop.

Most farmers agree with that stance, but I’ve seen some amazing looking marketing material that can sway even the most skeptical (myself).

A quick story…..

A few years ago I had a meeting with a representative selling a weather insurance product.

This guy gave me one heck of a good sales pitch. You could insure against nearly all of the individual weather components that drive a crop yield.

• Risk of it being too hot? They have you covered!
• Risk of an early frost? They have you covered!
• Risk of no rain? They have you covered!
• Too much rain/late planting? They have you covered!

I have to say, I was quite impressed.

This guy pushed very hard to come up and have me introduce him to a bunch of local farmers.

To their credit, they were very transparent with past performance. Given a challenging recent growing season, I wanted to take a look at this past performance before making any introductions.

In June of the preceding growing season, we got pounded with rain. Some areas received 20"+ of rain.

As you know, rain isn’t always a good thing. I knew of 3-4 areas where local farmers had had a yield of 50% of average.

I logged into the weather insurance portal to check the payouts from these areas. To my surprise…..the payouts were $0 for all the areas I checked.

If producers had this weather insurance, they would’ve had to pay approximately $50/acre in premium on top of $100+/acre losses!! OUCH!

I don’t blame the company that built the insurance, these are difficult problems to solve. Well, actually, their marketing was a bit sketchy and definitely didn’t focus on the potential “weather basis” as I called it…..the difference between the computer-predicted yield impacts and the actual yields.

I’ve also seen a number of algorithm-generated nitrogen recommendations more recently that were incredibly “off” when compared to tissue tests.

There are companies out there with a lot of funding and very good marketing. If a service doesn’t offer extensive ground truthing, consider me very skeptical.

While I’m not an agronomist, it makes sense to me to let your ground (via soil tests/maps/HD satellite imagery) and plants (via tissue tests) tell you what you need to do on your farm. These ground-truthing activities combined the power of a human brain are hard to beat in my opinion.

Technology is great….I just don’t trust a black box (especially at $5-10+/acre). The good thing is that most of you share my skepticism, which I think is warranted!

Use precision ag technology has an aid in your success not a crutch.

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