Find The Efficiency
In early November, a farmer celebrated the end of harvest by posting a picture of a planter to Twitter with a countdown until planting season. Thank goodness this year brought a widespread early harvest and few folks eating turkey legs in the combine cab.
Folks are excited to try new things in a new crop year. It’s the eternal promise of spring.
Those in agriculture also face apprehension of the unknown or, unfortunately, confirmation that sometimes we don’t learn from mistakes the first time.
Some challenges will persist, however. In talking with retailers, and as referenced by Ken Zuckerberg labor keeps rising up as a top challenge.
We can gain inspiration from the team in our cover story—Ceres Solutions’ Crops 63 location. The team has invested in a new way of doing work, and it has had two key returns on the investment.
First, employees aren’t spending time doing mundane or repetitive tasks. They’ve increased the value of their work and slashed the need for overtime.
Second, technology has cut managers’ time on hiring for seasonal labor. An example is the team’s work with Rogo Ag, which robotically soil-samples about half of Ceres Solutions’ covered acres. The co-op has folded the soil sampling into its program and uses the technology where needed. It’s not requested by farmers, but a lot of farmers have boasted with pride when it’s been in their fields.
The team at Ceres didn’t just put a bandage on a problem. It identified inefficiency, inserted new processes and started an avalanche of positive change. The team didn’t allow something to just be treated as an event or an item to cross off a list. Ceres has an appetite for innovation because it’s seen the gains from doing the work.
