Today’s episode is brought to you by FieldAgent by Sentera.

One key piece of the agtech conversation that often gets overlooked is the most likely customer for a lot of digital tools may not actually be a farmer. For many of them, an advisor to that farmer may be the one actually performing that task, and may have the biggest vested interest in adopting cutting-edge technologies. 

We’re calling this little mini-series “The Tech-Enabled Advisor.” We will profile some of the farmers’ advisers: agronomists, ag retailers, consultants, and other local professionals that farmers rely on for guidance, advice, and implementation. To help me identify the right tech-savvy advisors for these episodes, and to make sure we hear from different types of guests, I’ve asked various agtech companies to partner with me on these episodes.  The first one to say yes, was the sponsor of today’s episode: FieldAgent by Sentera. FieldAgent enables agronomic advisors to make more timely decisions by taking data they’re already using on a daily basis – such as satellite, weather, equipment, soil, and field operations and integrate it with drone data and their machine learning capabilities.

In this episode, we are joined by Matt Larson, Agronomy Sales Manager for CHS in Holdredge, Nebraska. CHS is a leading global agribusiness owned by farmers, ranchers and cooperatives across the United States. Matt and his team of 6 utilize technology like FieldAgent alongside Climate FieldView and CHS’s Agellum platform to service their farmer customers.

“The biggest thing we need to do to separate ourselves is bring new ideas. Everybody has a fertilizer price. Everybody sells a seed of some kind or a chemical of some kind. The big thing that we need to do is separate ourselves with technology, being a big one, service, information to growers, and just being able to offer those different ideas that maybe somebody else hasn't quite caught on to yet.” - Matt Larson

Matt has seen the business model of agronomists and agronomy sales evolve over the last 12 years whether it's via communication methods, producer expectations or relationships with the farmers. He has found that farmers want to see more verified data before adopting new technology and a lot of that can now be shared via the new digital platforms.  

“Growers have all this data. They have the planting data, they have the seeding data, harvest data, their spraying, all that stuff. What do they do with it? And that's where I think it's our job to dig through the weeds and find out what's the real, what's the fake for them, what makes a difference and then bring that to them.” - Matt Larson

 Please participate in our listener survey to help us focus the direction of the show:  https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU 

This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast:

• Matt Larson, Agronomy Sales Manager for CHS in Holdredge, Nebraska
• Discover how Matt incorporates new technologies like FieldAgent, Climate FieldView and CHS’s Agellum platform for his customers
• Listen to a discussion about what data matters to producers and what methods do they prefer to use to access it

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Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form.

Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com. 

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