As a grower, you’ve most likely asked yourself, “How do I improve my operation’s performance?” Defining success is an important first step towards improving performance on your operation. However, the definition of success has evolved over time. 

"I think people are really good looking at a 10,000-foot view, but when you dive deeper into the economics and profitability, that's where the rubber meets the road."
- Landon Aldinger, Farmer, Iowa Falls, IA

It takes a great deal of effort to plan appropriately for the upcoming crop season. It isn't easy to be successful, and it definitely takes some time. There's an old saying that says, “You plan your work, and then you work your plan.” 

Our approach to nutrient planning is based on the fact that we want to allow our advisors, partners, and growers to get ahead when it comes to planning for the next crop season. Some advisors are having this conversation early, even before growers start combining in the fall. As we dial our focus on helping growers create a plan before the growing season begins, we look at several things. Using a spatial soil sample as one of the foundation pieces is a large part of what we do. A spatial soil sample could be a grid sample where the field is divided into smaller sizes, giving you a number of samples within a field, two-and-a-half-acre grids are common in most areas. In other areas where the field is divided into zones, zone sampling can be driven by soils, historic imagery, or EC conductivity. Instead of capturing one sample for an entire field, they're capturing more intense, site-specific samples. Layering all these samples into one computerized system and letting data science derive the factors for you helps, rather than trying to figure it out on your own in those frustrating excel sheets.

"We use SciMax Solutions, a Premier Crop partner,
to push everything we can
in order to get the best ROI
and try to do the best job that we can."
- Mike Myers, Waukee, IA

Sometimes “averages” can be your worst enemy.

Why should you test products on your own farm? Your farm is unique and you have the equipment capabilities and data to conduct those trials. With little risk, you can have a more robust dataset than many companies.  I’ll explain…