As EFC Systems works to change the farmgate conversation, empowering growers and ag retailers with integrated tools to drive success.
As powerful digital agronomy solutions continue to make aggregating, documenting, and analyzing data easier than ever, one roadblock continues to thwart the agriculture industry’s forward progress: Convincing growers and retailers that the juice is worth the squeeze.
Today’s precision agriculture issues look a little different. The technological snafus of seasons past are mostly resolved. Files open, programs work, data gets collected. Tech problems have transformed into human ones, and innovative solutions are only as good as the people who commit to using them. Employing these solutions has also become the bare minimum. Users must make the effort to do things right—even when the tasks seem tedious.
Despite the promise of custom recommendations and the ability to make smarter decisions, not everyone is onboard. Jeremy Wilson, Senior VP Product Evangelist for EFC Systems and a farmer himself, believes three things need to happen in order for ag retailers and growers to start taking data driven decision making and comprehensive software solutions seriously.
“The first one is either having government regulation such that they make us do it or having a financial reward big enough for it to be a no-brainer,” he says. “The second is proving the efficiencies to growers and retailers by making connections between them, so that they both see what’s out there and what can be planned in advance. The third is figuring out what is needed for product procurement for the retailer, or for the grower, improving the profitability per acre.”
But if today’s growers and retailers struggle to see the value of documenting things correctly without regulatory intervention, they’re even less likely to do the work when it requires entering the same information into multiple systems. Having one app that monitors soil moisture, another that collects yield data, and a third that tracks product inventory requires a level of organization and consistency that is hard to maintain when the season is short and time is money. Comprehensive tools offer a potential solution.
Planning for Profitability in the Post-COVID Era
The current atmosphere is primed to be a driving force for adopting integrated tools that improve planning. If the high cost of input prices remain, Wilson says, it could leave a lot of growers battling shrinking margins next year.
“If we look at the cost of phosphates and nitrogen complexes, and even at product availability, that should drive us more than ever to be using tools and integration, as well as encouraging us to start planning earlier than we’ve ever done,” he says. “Yes, we have some pretty high commodities prices right now, but some of these numbers that are floating around for input prices and what they could be for 2022 tell me that there’s going to need to be some proper planning and preparation to be able to lock in profitability in 2022. That’s an incredible opportunity.”
The right plan is an opportunity for growers to minimize the impact of the rising input costs. Retailers have an opportunity to make important changes, too. Helping growers get the best possible position on the products they need for next year, is one way to build trust and improve the customer-supplier relationship. With both sides invested in the same outcome, growers and retailers can employ streamlined solutions to work together more efficiently.
“When you have a planning tool that is connected to an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, that system is going to be populated with current product prices for the products that are in your inventory today,” Wilson says. “So, when I go to make a plan for a fertilizer application, those prices are populated in real time. The retailer isn’t speculating. They understand product inventories and know what’s available to sell. A connected solution allows for efficiencies, but it also allows the retailer to be more educated about what the products and prices are.”
The Importance of Everything-in-One-Place Solutions
With pricing and inventory information readily available, growers can experiment with potential changes to their application schedules or nutrition programs. This type of system has the advantage of showing growers how these changes will impact the overall price and plan before they pull the trigger.
“With the planning tool and ERP connected together, you have a complete ecosystem,” Wilson says. “You have the ability to take an application plan and use the logistics tool to dispatch the equipment for that application. At the same time, you’ve connected the machine to the system, so that when the application data comes back, you’re not running to two or three or four different pieces of software to complete one task.”
EFC Systems offers two solutions that provide these insights. Merchant Ag™ is an E.R.P designed to address the unique aspects for agriculture retailers spanning agronomy, grain, energy, feed, management insights, and digital engagement. FieldAlytics™ is a comprehensive digital agronomy solution to help manage your agronomy operations. Both options boast a number of essential tools all in one place to drive efficiencies.
Given the state of the industry’s labor woes, these types of platforms have become particularly useful. No one has time to learn a wide range of systems. Everything-in-one-place solutions ensure a realistic amount of training. Wilson is familiar with the impacts too-much software can have on productivity—and a person’s motivation to actually capture and document important data.
“When I started in this industry, we’d run seven pieces of software to do what we’re doing right now in one piece of software,” he says. “Do you know how much training is involved in that? Instead, let’s minimize the amount of people that we need to touch this data in order to make decisions. Let’s work with that grower and be as efficient as we possibly can. We can train employees on one or two pieces of software versus 14 or 15, only to lose that person to the competitor who will pay more instead of having to train someone new. So, there’s a human resource benefit, but ultimately, integrated systems drive efficiency.”
A comprehensive software platform integrated into the other tools within an ag retailer’s ecosystem drives operational efficiency. These new efficiencies enable ag retailers to better serve growers by strengthening the relationships they have spent years to build. At the same time these tools provide planning capabilities, minimizing risk, and maximizing profitability for both the grower and the retailer.