Can A Scouting Technology Increase Farmer Trust?

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From 2020 with only a few farmers participating to covering millions of acres in 2023, Taranis says it wants to help retailers and farmers understand every decision with analytics via its AcreForward technologies. Via its multiple drone flights through the growing season, Taranis has built its product layering artificial intelligence, computer learning and agronomic knowledge. 

“Our technology enables a leaf-level view that brings good advisors, high-quality suppliers, and excellent growers together to understand what’s going on on the acre in a new way,” says Mike DiPaola chief commercial officer for Taranis. “We’re in a new era where we have game tape for the acre. We understand the management practices that led to how that hybrid yielded because we’ve created a digital twin of the field.”

DiPaola credits technological advances with improved battery life and drone platforms along with an increase in people willing and interested to try the technology. 

Brian Essinger, Sales Effectiveness Lead with Nutrien in northen Ohio, has worked with Taranis for two and a half years. 

“This is starting to change our culture. We've had people– even our own folks say we scout for free–and we don't. There’s a cost there—there’s always been. Taking the technology to our farmers showed the value in what we can provide,” Essinger says. 

Nutrien markets the technology with its farmers and pairs it with their in-the-field support, branding it Nutrien Digital Scout powered by Taranis. In their first year, they had 6,000 acres participate. Now it is more than 50,000 acres, and he says it’s their goal to triple that. 

“Agriculture and agronomy is really an applied art, it's elevated above a science because of the complexities and the variables. And here a trend is we're really focused on having ties quantify, analyze and have partners like Nutrien and the Nutrien Digital Scout provide even more value to their growers,” DiPaola says. 

Taranis technology was introduced to many as a replant calculation tool. Such was the case for Jeremy Deter of Midnight Farms based near Findlay, Ohio. For his farm, they work with Essinger’s team to schedule six flights a year, and they have decided to expand the program to every acre they farm. 

“If it doesn’t pay for itself on the farm, we can’t have it,” Deter says. “The digital scout has proven it can pay for itself.”
The tool is used to scout for water management issues, nutrient deficiencies, hybrid placement, fungicide efficacy, weed severity and more. 

“It's powerful to bring people together, rather than just talking about how we reorganize a value chain or move somebody out of the way,” DiPaola says. “With a mobile app, we can give you a view as if you are standing over the plant. It’s not just bringing images, it’s bringing real knowledge.”

Essinger credits the Taranis platform for elevating their scouting program. 

“We thought that we scouted; we didn't. What we were doing was making hypothesis decisions on small sample sizes. This gives us a bigger sample size,” he says. “Now, not only can I help make their decisions better, but I make the partnership more solid because I give them a practical approach to an issue.”

DiPaola highlights Taranis is continuing to work toward making decisions as instantaneous as is possible. 

“We are focused on taking advisor and grower know-how evaluating this qualitatively, and moving into more quantitative elements to understand what the yield impact is. Saying you can FaceTime your farms sounds a little weird, but it's real. You can see a leaf-level view and the value of it brings people together and we're making better decisions.”