It’s a full year push for George Madison, an agronomy specialist with Co-Alliance based in west central Indiana.
While he says his passion is the seed side of the business, it’s being able to offer growers solutions in crop fertility and crop protection that enable him to serve growers in all aspects of their farm inputs.
“There isn’t a selling season,” he says. “I feel like it’s all-year long. Whether you are out with the grower in the fall when he’s harvesting, planting in the spring, or you’re monitoring that the product you sold all through the summer months.”
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He adds: “That is probably the fun part for me. When you start off, you get a customer sold, and he agrees to come on board with you, with your product, and with your company. And then that’s when the ball starts rolling. You get that seed in the ground and then we’re monitoring it all throughout the growing season. We’re looking for any signs of pest problems, weed problems, crop nutrition, stress, anything that we can see that is hindering our ability to maximize every bushel.”
Madison shares the relationship has several touchpoints even before the planter—including variable-rate prescription fertility files and the conversations that lead to the create of the variable-rate planting prescriptions as well.
He also reports the in-season monitoring is being fostered with a digital aspect via new scouting tools and platforms.
“We’re utilizing every tool at our disposal from ground scouts, to myself, to partners of ours via the digital scouting services, anything we can utilize to stay ahead of these things,” he says.
One area for focus for the Co-Alliance team in 2023 is simplifying their digital operations and footprint. Madison says they are looking at ways to have a one-spot access to imagery, field records, data and more.
All of the work before the season, in season and after the combine pass is driven by goals and a process to continually improve the farm’s operations.
“My favorite part is being able to go out with growers every year and improve on our process. Once we get through the fall, we sit down and we start analyzing okay, what were our goals this year? Then how did we hit them–how close were we to them? What do we think are yield limiting factors were? And then we’ll spend the winter months drawing up a plan and getting ready for the next growing season and then implementing that that program all throughout following growing season, jumping over whatever hurdles may pop up in our way and I just died. The thrill of the hunt maybe is the word I’ll use, but it’s a process and I love it from start to finish,” he says.
