Walking around the grounds of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in 2014, one of the messages that was shared among dealers and company representatives was this notion that farmers are looking for a more focused approach to boosting production and following practices that are more sustainable.
One theme that was touched on repeatedly was that the days are long gone of large groups of growers attending launches and meetings to hear about “the latest, greatest” new seed lines. Welcome to the era of more individualized dealings.
It wasn’t a revolutionary concept because it’s not as though dealers, agronomists and farmers were loathe to work individually in the past. There has always been a united goal of driving yield and helping the farmer succeed. After all, success of one usually translates into success for the other.
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Yet something in the past couple of seasons has changed in terms of the approach of dealers, retailers and company sales representatives. Perhaps 20 years ago the focus was often on “the New” as opposed to whether a variety, new active ingredient or tillage implement was in line with any one farmer’s management practices. In fact, in the case of varieties and hybrids, the breeding and research pipeline has done such a tremendous job that the sector is approaching a level of parity that in the past was unheard of. Today there are very few of one company’s hybrids or varieties that completely outclass those of another — the playing field is becoming level.
The biggest change is the degree of complexity that has become standard operating procedure in farming today. It’s not that it’s been a sudden departure from regional promotion of one hybrid or variety. According to many company representatives, agronomists, dealers and retailers, that process has been unfolding for at least five years, and some might say longer than that. But it’s the layers of information — the maps, the fertilizer plans, the cropping plans, the increasing attention to soil health issues, crop protection principles, the advent of complex machinery and technology systems — that have changed the way farmers are farming.
And that’s changing the way the agri-marketing sector is dealing with farmers.
A matter of efficiency
When you ask Wayne Black how he views this shift, he likens it to advances in television technology. As seed sales and production specialist for Devolder Farms of Dover Centre, Ont., near Chatham, Black started his career with First Line Seeds in Guelph, and remembers the mass-appeal approach of selling one or two varieties to farmers within a large geographic area. He compares that practice of the 1970s and ’80s to the days of the black-and-white television — everyone had one of those at least. By the 1990s, the varieties and hybrids were more technologically advanced, particularly with the introduction of Bt corn hybrids and glyphosate-tolerant soybeans. Growers could also target individual fields with those technologies. Enter the era of the colour television.
“What we’ve got today is that we’ve been able to pull that down into a high-definition TV, to be able to sit down with a grower and say, ‘You have this 50-acre field, and on this particular section of your 50-acre field, you’re going to plant at a certain population and you’re going to plant this variety’,” says Black.
Of course, the technologies by which seed can be planted, measured (variable rate), fertilized (split applications), tested for nutrient levels or protected against disease, pests and weeds have all changed as well.
All of these things are happening with a narrowed focus on a much smaller scale, such as just one part of a field instead of the whole farm as in the 1970s. There’s more information to share and to co-ordinate, says Black, with greater specificity and a broader capacity for capturing data points and details.
It’s not just the variety or the hybrid that’s central to crop production. All of the parameters, which might not have been so accurately accounted for 30 and 40 years ago, are being precisely managed today, or can be. In fact, in his televison analogy, Black sees going a step further to a three-dimensional, flat-screen colour TV. It’s not so much a different approach, says Black, as it is learning to use different tools with a clearer set of goals. It’s moving from managing a 50-acre portion of a field to a 50-square-foot parcel. It’s not there yet, but it’s getting to that point.
“We’re closing in on turning Precision Agriculture into Decision Agriculture,” Black says.
The need for technology
Asked if he ever sees some level of pushback, Black concedes that a technology or a new concept advances only as far as individual farmers want to incorporate it. Looking back at the early days of GPS-based technology, we can see how combines were outfitted with yield monitors to mark the beginning of that trend, and the early adapters were the ones to lead it forward. But it took time for “everyone” to join that wave.
When variable-rate technology (VRT) was introduced a couple of years later, there wasn’t the same eagerness to find the early adapters — and for two reasons. One, they were still engrossed in learning and sharing the yield monitor wave. And two, VRT was, in many ways, a step up from yield monitors and maps. It’s taken the industry more than 15 years to reach the level where VRT is beginning to show the same value as yield monitors in the late 1990s.
That, says Black, is where there is a shift in the practical side of farming. The technology has become so advanced, in concert with a sharpened focus on agronomics, that farmers are increasingly relying on professional help to make the most of maps and data points and the products of advanced breeding.
“Today we’re creating more accurate yield maps, and growers are either doing it themselves, or they’re handing them off to somebody else to overlay with other maps they currently have from their farm operation, to start the move towards a prescription on an individual farm basis,” notes Black.
One of the advances that’s enabling efficiencies, and that “precision to decision” approach, is the speed with which information can be transferred. Black states in many cases, by the time a dealer drives out to the grower’s house or field, that grower can have the data on their desktop computer or mobile device, and have it analyzed before the dealer can pick up the phone to call the grower and set up a face-to-face meeting. It doesn’t always happen that way but that’s the concept that’s in development right now.
“It’s recognizing what we’ve done in the past but not dwelling on it, and being open to what the future provides,” says Black, adding that people within agriculture will have to change as the technology changes with it. “And it’s the same with the growers — some of the growers who are adopting this technology are in their 20s and 30s — some of them are also in their 50s and 60s.”
A difference among generations
That age factor and the ability to incorporate the changing technology are also front-of-mind for Brandon Yott, product development and marketing specialist with the Agromart Group, based at Belton, Ont., north of London. Yott points to the growing concerns surrounding retirement-age professionals in the agri-marketing sector and believes that’s also influencing how technology is adopted and how information is interpreted and utilized.
In the past, it was easier to train a relatively younger workforce coming out of university and entering the agri-food industry. But the prescriptive approach requires more knowledge, including historical references, and not just of the farmer’s field, but of a particular variety’s lineage or its past performance. Yott doesn’t want to discriminate on age, but the fact remains: older dealers, agronomists or sales representatives have that long-term insight through sheer repetition and years of experience. Yet all of that is changing as the old guard enters retirement age, leaving this increasingly complex relationship to a younger cohort.
“You already have this ‘new worker’ shortage, and unfortunately in our industry, it’s hard to bring in outside labour,” says Yott, adding that such individuals may not have the same awareness of the market or growing conditions. “If they’re from outside of the farm, the learning curve to get into the seed industry is phenomenal. Your agronomic information and the genetics have to come to a whole new level, and more information is needed to help sell a specific variety on a producer’s farm.”
In any industry, it can take someone new to the job as much as a year before they’re really up-to-speed with that particular business or that industry, even with a core set of competencies or skills. Yott contends that in agriculture, that process can take twice as long.
What complicates matters even further is the depth of information that farmers are dealing with. Yott echoes Black’s contention about the complexities of change — of planting multiple hybrids on a planter or using fewer nutrients or targeting them to a specific region of a field. Yott relates a statement from a dealer he knows who said that in the past farmers came to them for information; now they’re coming to them with information. And they want help sorting through data points, coloured maps, soil test scores, digesting that information and finding those few nuggets they can use to drive production in a sustainable manner.
“If Ontario’s average was 150 bushels for corn, there are a lot of hybrids that can get you there without any issues,” says Yott. “If you want to go to that 300-bushel level, well, now you need to reach that top end, and there’s a whole bunch of factors that are coming together. And to try saying, ‘Let’s look at it at a much more prescription-based, field level-based perspective, with precision planting, prescription nutrition, soil types varying across your field’ — they’re all leading to this new world of what’s right for my field, and sub-field, as opposed to what’s the best hybrid from Windsor to Ottawa.”
Yott says he often links this notion to that of investing or insurance, where diversity and recognizing certain conditions are key to reducing risk and maximizing performance. Maybe 2015 is shaping up to be a dry year. If so, there are some genetics that are going to perform better under dry conditions.
“The more specific you can tailor that variety mix to your specific field and put in different options in there, you’re spreading out that risk,” says Yott.
Changing attitudes
Yott also sees a trend or a streamlining effect taking shape — one where there used to be four or five types of growers, including so-called hand-wringers or those who wanted only the newest technology. Now, he says, conditions in agriculture are causing a kind of distillation down to two basic approaches. The first is made up of those growers who listen to the likes of Dr. Fred Below from the University of Illinois, who advocates investing in production through variety selection, fertility plans and timely applications. The second is that segment who want the best price, whether they have a consulting agronomist to help them with their cropping plan, or they’ve done their own work and are confident they can bring the crop along themselves.
“And it’s not young versus old, it’s not big versus small, it’s really ‘we’re going to spend our way to reach the top end,’ or ‘we’re going to try to save our way,’” says Yott. “They can be quite different in mindset when they’re looking at that value piece or that agronomic and solutions approach.”
It’s also a matter of wording: sometimes inputs, equipment — even the seed — need to be regarded as an investment versus only being a cost. Look at the overall value of the spend instead of seeing only the negative connotation.
“A lot of us aren’t looking at cost per acre anymore but opportunity per acre, and asking: ‘What’s the top end?’ or ‘How many bushels per thousand plants?’” poses Yott. “It’s not just how much did it cost, it’s determining the value of that top-end. And if I can invest a dollar more, can I get three dollars back? If I can do that, then it’s a good investment. That’s not always about cost as much as opportunity.”
Some just want results
For all of these advances, Brian Woolley contends that there are other considerations to be made to the prescriptive — or decision-oriented approach of today. Woolley spent years on the crop protection side. As an agronomic sales representative with Syngenta Canada, he’s had to immerse himself in the seed side of the agri-marketing sphere. And for all of the opportunities that the technology and research are pointing to for farmers, he concedes there are those who just look at the latest results from either the provincial performance trials or a company’s catalogue, and default to what they want.
“It comes down to the conversation with the grower, and let’s drill down to what the grower needs and wants, and what’s best for that farm,” says Woolley. “Those are the conversations we want to have. I don’t think this (prescriptive approach) is all that novel an idea, it’s more a case of maybe the terms are new, and they envelop a lot of what’s going on in agriculture today, where we have a focus on the soil, a more prescriptive fertilizer blend, populations or row width. There’s much more to it than just selecting the hybrid or the variety.”
Woolley also agrees that the days of “mass appeal” product launches are a thing of the past, and Syngenta is a perfect example. Years ago, the seed division — NK Seeds — was based north of London while crop protection products came out of the Honeywood Farm near Plattsville, and product launches at either location were treated separately. Today, the two research facilities operate in concert.
“We don’t have these big launch days, and when we do bring growers to a plot, we don’t just have one or two varieties at these plots. We have a myriad of selections, and we don’t talk solely about the hybrid or the variety,” says Woolley. “A lot of the time, we’re joining that with a discussion about fungicides or row width or population, and really drilling down on the agronomics of a variety or hybrid.”
Even in discussions about the company’s plots, the focus isn’t always about yield. Instead, it’s about working behind the scenes on improving conditions in the field, to figure out the best approach before reaching the point of talking about the variety with growers and dealers. There’s more information involved and more time spent in discussion with more people, be it sales reps or biologists, with everyone working together on a prescriptive approach that really helps the grower.
Looking to the future, Woolley believes the industry will see much the same pattern of “introduction” followed by “familiarization/incorporation” that has come with GPS and other equipment trends.
The same was the case for Bt corn hybrids and glyphosate-tolerant soybean varieties, where introduction has given way to familiarity and maximizing performance. He says we’ll keep seeing more varieties and hybrids being launched, followed by a learning curve with their uses, and then the phase where growers learn to manipulate the many different parameters to improve production.
An example of this is seeing the rise of fungicides as growth promoters in corn and wheat. Yes, they do a very good job in protecting against diseases, but the delayed maturity benefit has only come to light in the last five to eight years, and there’s an ongoing learning curve associated with that practice (including the potential for the development of resistance and new active ingredients).
“If you get the chance to sit down with the grower and talk varieties and hybrids, there’s far more to what we’re talking about,” says Woolley. “And more growers are becoming in tune with what they need. They’re getting their soils analyzed or working with a consultant to really understand the potential response in their fields to what they can do with herbicide, seed, in-season protection and micronutrients.”
This article first appeared in the February 2015 Soybean Guide.
