The Scoop Podcast: Be The Trusted Adviser For Technology, Just Like Agronomy

Matt Clark is a digital technology manager at Ceres Solutions. The Crops 63 location was recently recognized as the 2022 Business Innovation Award winner. Additionally, Matt was named to The Scoop’s 40 Under 40. He shares how Ceres Solutions is challenging itself and challenging growers to adopt technology to improve how they do business. And he talks about a unique “test plot” for technology. 

What are the main objectives of your job? 

I oversee our field team of support specialists, and they help all of our agronomy locations when it comes to technology in general—so anything from our operations tools to ERP. I also oversee our precision ag programs, mainly our grid sampling program that we have here called Core Agronomics.

How have you applied the practice of “digitize then automate” in your soil sampling? 

We started partnering with Rogo Ag probably three or four years ago now. But a little backstory on our program. We have a pretty robust two and a half acre grid sampling program. And we've always been centrally dispatched so that we have a very consistent process across the board. So if you sign up for Core Agronomics, you're getting the same thing every time. We started partnering with Rogo Ag mainly because we had part time labor issues just like everybody else. And we were really struggling to find those samplers, even three or four years ago to fill in the gaps where we needed extra labor. So in came Rogo. And it's been a great partnership so far. We can trust the reliability. Being a semi autonomous sampling fleet, we can trust that they're getting the correct deaths and they're pulling the samples in the correct place. 

This technology has helped with labor management and recruitment as well? 

That's been a huge benefit to us not having to recruit as many part time employees. It’s one less area where we have to look for them. So that's a huge benefit where we don't have to do that and onboard them and then re onboard every year.

Is this technology service sold to farmers differently? 

I think one of the things that we've done that's a little unique is we haven't actually promoted this as a differentiator right now. So if you sign up for Core Agronomics, you are not necessarily guaranteed that Rogo is going to pull the soil samples. We still operate our own soil sampling fleet, and it's a high quality employee that's going out there, with a Ceres rig to pull soil samples, but we don't differentiate the Rogo pulled sample. We use it as an operational benefit to ourselves to where we can leverage them where we need them the most, instead of guaranteeing a certain acre gets a certain type of machine run across it.

Can you share an example of how you have digitized and then automated fertility recommendations? 

When it comes to writing fertility recommendations, we do everything through Ag World. And that's also our tool that we use for agronomy operations in general. Once we create a sampling job and pull the soil samples and results come back, our sellers actually have templates laid out on those fields ahead of time, and then it'll automatically generate the first set of recommendations as soon as those results come back from the lab. So we're not waiting on a GIS specialist or even the salesman themselves to make that first set of recommendations for that field. Then from there, they can review those with the customer and either can make adjustments. 

And there’s automated reporting when applications are done in the field, correct? 

That's what everybody likes the most. We do all of our liquid applications and flat rate fertilizer through there and it’s our work order system. So we're creating plans and work orders in there. Our applicators all have iPads in their machines now. That's how they're getting their work orders is digitally through those iPads. And then once they complete the field, they fill out their spray logs or application logs, whatever they need for that field. Then they submit that and that also sends a text notification to a contact group. So it could be several different people–it could be the landlord or the operator themselves or farmer or who have you on that operation. Then that gives them a text that tells them “Hey, t this field or several fields got done when it got done. And it sends them a link to Ag World that they can click on and it'll give them the full actual of completed work orders.

And you’ve doubled the acres you’ve completed farm plans on?

We did that this last year. Fingers crossed we do it again this year. We can lay out the entire program for a customer at a field level. That gives us the plan that we can give the grower at the end of the day and then it also essentially sets up all of our work orders for the season or at least a large proportion of them. So we're not having to make the step every time a customer calls in and says we're ready for an application. We don't necessarily have to make the work order, but we can just go ahead and convert that to that plan to a work order and it's ready to go.

What did your team learn from 2022? 

I think from my position just this fall, it's kind of fresh in our minds, but it was a very condensed fall here in Indiana, when it came to everything.  We really didn't have a lot of rain, which was good in an aspect it kept our customers in the field they were able to harvest almost nonstop. But that put some strain on us on getting our samples collected and getting those results and recommendations made. And then also getting applications completed in time because you never know when the weather is gonna turn so a lot of the customers were hammer down most of all to try and get it all them.

What is the IoT Hub? 

This has been an awesome project that we've worked on this last year. So Crops 63 is a seed hub and a technology center for us, but it also has a large WinField Answer Plot we've had for many years and we've hosted several plot days out there. But if you think of the idea of just a seed plot where you're reviewing different hybrids and different treatments. we're applying that same concept to technology now. So here within this plot, we've set up a LoRaWan gateway in this last year. We have five different technologies that we put in this plot and we're just reviewing it to make sure it works. 

We want to be the trusted adviser to our customers when it comes to technology just like we have for chemical and fertilizer and seed as a cooperative. Not all of these technologies were successful. We've got several of them that we're not moving forward with going forward. But that was kind of the point of this project. We want to learn about the technology before we take it to our customers and try to utilize it.  It was more of a proof concept for ourselves, just trying to prove that we could do it and we think we did so we're going to continue with it.

What advice would you have for others in ag retail? 

I would say challenge the status quo a little bit. One thing we've especially when it comes to technology training is we're always looking at different ways to do things. That's where you become innovative–if you're trying something different. Not everything's going to succeed, but if you can try and change the game a little bit you can gain efficiencies that way and at least learn from it. 

What’s a prediction for the year ahead? 

I think Ceres is going to continue to challenge our customers to adopt technology. We are continually making advancements when it comes to this. For example, we are working on a customer portal. We're going to continue to challenge our customers in that aspect. And it's not necessarily us challenging them. It's more them challenging us to stay current with the times and continue to evolve instead of staying with the status quo.