TECHNOLOGY

Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror

Wed, 06 May 2026 17:56:23 GMT

China is stealing the farm. Real-time. Live action. Happening now.

The most devastating raid of agricultural technology in U.S. history has been underway for at least 25 years and continues at a blistering pace.

Case after case, year after year, brazen Chinese Communist Party (CCP) espionage continues. Yet, every federal prosecution highlights an undeniable truth—each bust is a pebble in a landslide of successful heists. Two new cases per day and 2,000 pending investigations, according to the FBI, many of those ag-related, all while CCP officials brazenly proclaim a theft policy of “picking flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China.”

Whether pinching product from research labs, digging rows in the heartland, masquerading as USDA-approved envoys, hiding seeds in carry-on luggage, mailing crop pathogens in panties, plane-hopping with trade secrets, or a litany of other heists, there’s always something new for the CCP to steal.

The ransacking of U.S. agriculture is on. Arguably, bigger and bolder than ever.

Adios From Wuhan
From 2014-2016, Jiunn-Ren Chen, a Chinese national, split time between Ankeny, Iowa, and St. Louis, Missouri, working under the Monsanto umbrella at The Climate Corporation (TCC). Good job and good life for a family man with a wife and daughter. More like good cover.

In late 2015, Chen contacted Sinochem China National Seed Corporation and requested employment. Sinochem, steered by the CCP, reciprocated. In May 2016, Chen flew to Beijing, met with Sinochem reps, and caught a flight back to the U.S. On June 1, he resigned from Monsanto/TCC, but kept hush-hush on the new job with Sinochem, insisting he was moving to China to be closer to extended family.

“If a gang of thieves tells you they are going to steal your farm, you should believe them,” says Col. John Mills.

(Photo public domain)

Later in the same day, June 1, Chen logged into TCC’s Google Drive account and downloaded six files. The following day, he downloaded two additional files. Further, between June 4-10, he downloaded 55 more files.

According to subsequent FBI testimony: The files downloaded by Chen after his resignation contained trade secrets and confidential proprietary information … Further analysis revealed that Chen had used his TCC email address to transmit confidential trade secrets and proprietary information to other email accounts on at least five occasions between approximately August 19, 2014 and February 14, 2015.

On August 19, 2016, Chen bought three one-way airline tickets to China. The next day, he, along with his wife and daughter, boarded an 11:30 a.m. flight out of St. Louis Lambert International Airport, 63 files the richer. Adios.

By way of Shanghai, Chen disappeared in Wuhan. He was never caught. He was never criminally prosecuted.

Chen’s story is dime-a-dozen. In 2022, then FBI Director Christopher Wray described the level of CCP theft as “More brazen, more damaging than ever before.”

“When we tally up what we see in our investigations, over 2,000 of which are focused on the Chinese government trying to steal our information and technology, there is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China … The Chinese government steals staggering volumes of information and causes deep, job-destroying damage across a wide range of industries, so much so that … we’re constantly opening new cases to counter their intelligence operations, about every 12 hours or so.”

“That theft, those threats,” Wray added, “are happening right here in America, literally every day.”
Col. (Ret.) John Mills , national security professional and former Director of Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs at the Department of Defense, told Agweb in 2021: “The FBI woke up to this threat far too late, and now we are in very deep. It is the CCP’s goal to steal, glean, obtain, transcribe, and photograph anything of value from the U.S., and the agriculture sector is right at the top.”

Best Western Comforts
Multiple Chinese thieves and spies nabbed over the past decade offer a tiny glimpse behind the CCP’s espionage curtain and suggest ag theft on a vast scale.

• 2011: Mo Hailong, director of international business for Dabeinong Technology Group and a legal U.S. resident for 10 years, was spotted crawling through Iowa corn rows, pocketing biotech seed. The incident spurred a multi-year FBI investigation. Hailong and several CCP cohorts were arrested in 2013, boarding a plane for China. Hidden inside their luggage, under microwave popcorn bags and Subway napkins, were hundreds of seed samples. No matter: Hailong had already mailed over 1,000 lb. of seed corn (Pioneer and Monsanto) to Beijing. He was sentenced to 36 months in prison.

Mo Hailong’s prosecution was a tip-of-the-iceberg bust.

(Photo public domain)

• 2013: Weiqiang Zhang obtained a doctorate in rice genetics at LSU and got a job at Ventria, a Kansas-based biopharmaceutical corporation, as a seed breeder, where he stole seed samples representing $75 million in research. Zhang used USDA letterhead to send counterfeit invitations to six colleagues in China, welcoming them on a tour of Ventria and several more ag stops. The delegates made the rounds (including Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark., where Zhang’s main accomplice, Wengui Yan, worked as a geneticist) and were nailed just before flying home with hundreds of rice seeds in their bags, hidden inside envelopes slipped inside a Best Western remote control pouch and within the folds of an Arkansas Democrat Gazette newspaper. Zhang was sentenced to almost 10 years and Yan to one year.

Weiqiang Zhang, left, and Wengui Yan, nailed in an Arkansas/Kansas seed tech case.

(Photo public domain)

• 2017: Haitao Xiang worked for The Climate Corporation (Monsanto) estimating soil properties via satellite imagery. On May 24, 2017, Xiang announced his forthcoming resignation, and roughly two weeks later, on June 9, after completing an exit interview, downloaded a proprietary algorithm, the Nutrient Optimizer, onto an SD card, and drove from St. Louis to Chicago O’Hare. Xiang was caught at boarding with the SD card in a carry-on bag. He was allowed to leave for China; the FBI wasn’t certain, at that point, what was on the card. After a return to the U.S., in 2019, Xiang was arrested. Despite seizure of the SD card, Xiang presumably had stashed other copies of the Nutrient Optimizer, and possibly delivered those to CCP contacts. He was sentenced in 2022 to 29 months.

However, outright ag technology theft is only one facet of the CCP’s duplicity. Next up, agroterrorism.

Lie and Deny
In July 2024, Zunyong Liu, a plant pathology scientist from Zhejiang University, flew into Detroit from Shanghai on a tourist visa. He claimed to be on a vacation to visit his girlfriend, Yunqing Jian, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan (UM) in Ann Arbor. (UM maintains roughly 4,000 Chinese students, roughly half the university’s foreign population.) Both halves of the loved-up couple had expertise with a nasty biological pathogen, Fusarium graminearum, a strain that causes head blight and annually inflicts billions of dollars in crop losses. Both had contributed to major academic papers on Fusarium.

Zunyong Liu’s four baggies of smuggled plant material.

(Photo public domain)

U.S. Customs officers gave Liu the squeeze—and out spilled a chain of lies and half-truths. He claimed to have no “work materials” with him, but inside a small pocket of Liu’s backpack, officers found crumpled tissues concealing a filter paper with a “series of circles drawn on it” and four plastic bags containing red plant fibers.

Liu doubled down, insisting on a setup, and claimed the material was planted in his carry-on. As investigators tightened the screws, Liu folded, admitting he was transporting Fusarium for research at UM.

While searching Liu’s iPhone, Customs agents found a pdf in a WhatsApp folder: 2018 Plant-Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Conditions. The article referenced Fusarium as a destructive disease and pathogen for agriculture.

When FBI agents questioned Liu’s girlfriend, Jian , she denied all knowledge of Liu’s smuggling or intentions. She lied—repeatedly. As agents asked for her smartphone, Jian began “manipulating” the device as it was seized. The phone contained multiple communications with Liu (deported back to China) that had been wiped clean, but the remaining messages were damning and showed direct involvement in Liu’s illegal activity.

Yunqing Jian both knew about her boyfriend’s smuggling efforts, and had personally smuggled biological material into the U.S.

(Photo public domain)

Additionally, her phone contained a telltale work assessment form from January 2024 that included a pledge of loyalty to the CCP: I adhere to the four basic principles , support the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CCP), resolutely implement the party’s educational guidelines and policies, love education, care for students, unite colleagues, love the motherland, and care about national affairs…

Adding deep layers to the cake, Jian had personally smuggled biological pathogens into the U.S. on prior occasions, and had given another Chinese national, Xia Chen, explicit instructions in how to conceal and code pathogens in postal mail: “There are usually no problems. Rest assured. I have mailed these before.”

Pleasures and Pathogens
Days after the arrest of Yunqing Jian (sentenced to time served in November 2025 and deported to China), another Chinese national, Chengxuan Han, a scientist at a laboratory in Wuhan, was nabbed by U.S. Customs agents on June 8, 2025, at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after a flight from Shanghai. Han was traveling on a J1 work visa to do research at the University of Michigan, specifically at the lab of Professor Shawn Xu of the Life Sciences Institute.

Chengxuan Han: “Hello! This is a fun letter with interesting patterns. I hope you can enjoy the pleasure within it.”

(Photo public domain)

Why was she apprehended? Han mailed four packages, which she labeled as “plastic plates,” but which contained plasmids and petri dishes of C. elegans with genetic modifications (a nematode prohibited from import by USDA) from her Wuhan lab to the UM lab. The packages were intercepted by U.S. Customs. Inside one package was a book with a peculiar envelope slipped between the pages. The envelope held a handwritten note with 28 shapes and a “labeling scheme” for each shape. The note stated: “Hello! This is a fun letter with interesting patterns. I hope you can enjoy the pleasure within it.”

From the get-go, Han denied mailing any packages. Pressed by investigators, she then admitted mailing packages, but insisted the contents only included paper cups and a book. Later, Han acknowledged the biological material, but insisted it was part of a sequencing game she devised with clues given for each plasmid “for fun.”

Confronted with more evidence, Han fessed up, according to an affidavit submitted by FBI agent Edward Nieh: “Han admitted that she had sent packages containing nematode growth medium (NGM), in the petri dishes, and plasmids, in the envelope. Based on my training and experience, it is unlikely that the petri dishes contained solely NGM because NGM is readily available and inexpensive in the United States. CBP Officers conducted a manual review of Han’s electronic devices and found Han had deleted the content of her devices three days prior to her arrival to the United States.”

Han was sentenced to time served, roughly three months, and deported back to China—free to mail more pathogens to the U.S.

Scot-Free: Have A Nice Flight
Who, specifically, were the intended recipients of Han’s “fun” packages at the University of Michigan?

Enter three Chinese citizens, all research scholars holding J-1 visas at the Shawn Xu laboratory: Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang. As soon as authorities made the connections, the threesome bailed.

On September 29, 2025, the trio was terminated by UM after refusing to participate in an internal investigation. Three weeks later, the men were arrested at JFK International Airport at the departure gate for a flight to Beijing.

The handwritten “matching game” of Chengxuan Han, along with one of eight smuggled petri dishes.

(Photo public domain)

Bottom line, despite the arrests, all three got away scot-free. In February 2026, DOJ dropped the case against Bai, F. Zhang, and Z. Zhang . Smuggling charges were dismissed at DOJ’s request. The three researchers flew home to China. “The dismissal came as a pleasant surprise,” stated John Minock, their attorney. “We don’t know the details. What we were told was there was some kind of intervention by the Chinese consulate in Chicago.”

Underwear of Man-Made Fibers
Generally, panties laced with E. coli, mailed 8,000 miles to a CCP plant pathology researcher in Indiana by a technology company in China, tend to draw U.S. Customs attention.

In June 2023, Youhuang Xiang, a card-carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party with a doctorate in plant physiology, received a J1 visa to study genome editing in wheat plants and resistance to fungal diseases at the Department of Biology at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington. Among his specialties: Fusarium graminearum.

On March 28, 2024, Xiang received a package from China. Per shipping documents, the package was listed as “Underwear of Man-Made Fibers, Other Womens,” and shipped by Guangzhou Sci Tech Innovation Trading.

Youhuang Xiang: Deported for smuggling biological material into the U.S. Ironically, Xiang (kneeling, far right) was a 2024 National Fusarium Head Blight Forum Poster Competition third-place winner.

(Photo U.S. Wheat & Barley Scab Initiative)

Tracked and questioned by U.S. Customs and the FBI, Xiang played innocent. Denial and more denial: I never worked for the CCP and if any of the labs I worked at in China were funded by the CCP, I don’t know anything about it.

The package, he initially declared, was merely a jacket. However, Xiang later admitted the “clothing” contained plasmid DNA derived from E. coli bacteria and was mailed to him for use in his research at IU. He pleaded guilty to smuggling E. coli and was sentenced to time served (four months) and deported.

And the band played on.

Midnight In Michigan
The funnel is in place. In a typical year, 250,000-300,000 Chinese students (roughly one-third of all foreign enrollees) attend U.S. universities, with almost all in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and all vetted by the CCP. “Every Chinese student who China sends here has to go through a party and government approval process,” a senior U.S. official told Reuters in 2018. “You may not be here for espionage purposes as traditionally defined, but no Chinese student who’s coming here is untethered from the state.”

A 2019 FBI report states “the vast majority of students and researchers from China are in the United States for legitimate academic reasons.” However, the FBI’s determination is damning, considering the “vast majority” potentially leaves tens of thousands in the active espionage category.

Camp Grayling, where five Chinese University of Michigan students were caught at midnight photographing military vehicles and facilities.

(Photo U.S. Army)

The FBI report also asserts: “the Chinese government uses some Chinese students … and professors to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property.”

“These Chinese scholars,” the analysis notes, “may serve as collectors, wittingly or unwittingly, of economic, scientific, and technological intelligence from U.S. institutions to ultimately benefit Chinese academic institutions and businesses.”

A cursory look at Chinese researcher/student espionage activity beyond agriculture, just over the past few years, is striking.

• In 2020, two Chinese University of Michigan master’s students, Jielun Zhang and Yuhao Wang , were apprehended while photographing military infrastructure at Naval Air Station Key West (NASKW), in Florida. Zhang was sentenced to a year in prison; Wang got nine months. Also, days prior to Zhang and Wang’s arrest, another Chinese national, Lyuyou Liao , was arrested at NASKW for entering and taking pictures, and sentenced to one year. (Significantly, another Chinese university student, Zhao Qianli , while on a summer exchange program in 2018, was caught photographing and videotaping at NASKW. He was sentenced to a year. His host university in the U.S. was not publicly disclosed.)

• Saw-Teong Ang, a University of Arkansas engineering professor, was indicted in 2020 for wire fraud after accepting U.S contracting funds related to NASA and the Air Force while making false statements and not disclosing CCP ties. Ang got a year in prison.

• Zhengdong Cheng, a professor at Texas A&M, was charged in 2020 with wire fraud for hiding relationships with Chinese corporations and universities, while accepting a NASA grant. Cheng was sentenced to time served after 13-month prison stint.

• Song Guo Zheng, a professor of internal medicine at Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University, was sentenced to three years in an immunology fraud. After hiding affiliation with a CCP-influenced university, Zheng attempted to flee the U.S. in 2020, according to DOJ: “He was carrying three large bags, one small suitcase and a briefcase containing two laptops, three cell phones, several USB drives, several silver bars, expired Chinese passports for his family, deeds for property in China and other items.”

Zhengdong Cheng, a Texas A&M professor, was sentenced to time served after 13-month prison stint for hiding CCP relationships and obtaining grant money.

(Photos Texas A&M University)

• After Texas A&M University began questioning CCP influence at its lab facilities, and attempted to find out how many faculty members were involved with Chinese recruitment, the answer was stunning. From the Wall Street Journal , Jan. 30, 2020: “… they were astounded at the results—more than 100 were involved with a Chinese talent-recruitment program, even though only five had disclosed their participation.”

• Former University of Florida professor Lin Yang was indicted in 2021 for making false statements in 2019 regarding a $1.75 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Our indictment alleges that Yang engaged in acts of deliberate deception so that he could also further the research goals of the Chinese Communist government and advance his own business interests,” said U.S. Attorney Lawrence Keefe. Yang fled the U.S. in 2019, prior to the indictment, and has not returned.

• In August 2023, five Chinese University of Michigan students (Zhekai Xu, Renxiang Guan, Haoming Zhu, Jingzhe Tao, and Yi Liang) were caught at midnight photographing military vehicles and facilities at Camp Grayling, a Michigan National Guard site. They graduated and left the U.S. before charges were filed in October 2024.

• In April 2026, Tianrui Liang, a Chinese university student visiting the U.S., was charged with photographing military aircraft at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Neb. Liang said the pictures were for his “personal collection.” According to the FBI, Liang also drove to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota prior to his Nebraska stop. Liang is currently in federal custody.

And the kicker for U.S. agriculture? The number of CCP-approved Chinese students in U.S. colleges, according to the White House, is set to climb to 600,000 per year. Simple math: If the CCP taps a mere 1% for espionage and theft, that means 6,000 spies/moles on American campuses. Every percent higher means an exponential leap in technology thieves.

Coerce, Coopt, Compel
China openly flaunts its policy of theft. The CCP, in 2017, announced it would force all citizens and companies to steal trade secrets via a national intelligence law: “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work” if directed. The blanket law includes students or researchers. Coerce, coopt, and compel.

The CCP has executed the most expansive technology heist in history, tapping all fields of U.S. industry, business, and production, including agriculture, as evidenced by a 2017 report by the U.S. Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimating a loss of $255 billion to $600 billion to the U.S. economy each year, and fingering China as the “principle IP infringer.”

“It is the CCP’s goal to steal, glean, obtain, transcribe, and photograph anything of value from the U.S., and the agriculture sector is right at the top,” says Col. John Mills.

(Photo public domain)

In 2019, Joe Augustyn, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, stated, “We know without a doubt that anytime a graduate student from China comes to the US, they are briefed when they go, and briefed when they come back.”

“They don’t just come here to spy ... they come here to study and a lot of it is legitimate,” Augustyn said . “But there is no question in my mind, depending on where they are and what they are doing, that they have a role to play for their government.”

Previously cited national security expert John Mills, echoes Augustyn. “It’s my opinion that many are either working for the Ministry of State Security (China’s CIA-FBI hybrid organization), and 100% are fully aware of their obligation to the CCP … Part of their presence here, granted with CCP permission, is a promise, often a quid pro quo, to assist the CCP in getting whatever is needed.”

“I’d say most all U.S. industries have been asleep, certainly including agriculture,” Mills adds. “The CCP gave us a blueprint and announced they were going to take over certain high-tech industries, and agriculture was right there on the list. They literally told the world what they were going to do. If a gang of thieves tells you they are going to steal your farm, you should believe them.”

Seed, digital tech, or machinery, the CCP has jammed fat fingers deep in the American ag pie. They play for keeps.

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Georgia Watermelon Heist Explodes into Epic Night of Pandemonium

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case

Cold-Busted: Frozen Deer Decoy Nabs Poachers and Cocaine in Spectacular Sting

Sticky Fingers: USDA Fraudster Steals $200M in Stunning Scam

Broadband is Transforming How an Arizona County Uses Ag Tech

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:08:55 GMT

Imagine a future where autonomous tractors navigate the roads and fields as farmers give commands from miles away. This future also allows farmers to optimize water usage. Precision and efficiency take on entirely new meanings. A county in Arizona is working to make that future a reality.

The dry, hot, sand-colored landscape of Yuma County, Ariz., sprinkled with fields of bright green lettuce, is getting a boost from high-speed internet.

Today, farming is a matter of precision. With better internet comes better precision. According to the Association of Equipment Management , precision agriculture adoption leads to a 5% increase in crop farming productivity, a 5% reduction in water use and a 7% reduction in fuel consumption.

Turning the “Winter Lettuce Capital” into a Global High-Tech Testing Hub

Known as the “ Winter Lettuce Capital of the World ,” the Middle Mile Fiber Network and broadband system will bring better internet. This will ultimately help farmers implement the latest technology. Like roots from a plant, underground fibers now stretch throughout the county connected to 32 broadband towers that reach to the sky.

“It is exciting; there’s been a lot of products and things [such as water sensors] that I’ve wanted to do out on the farm, but without the ability to have permanent or productive internet services, I’ve been reluctant,” says Mike Pasquinelli, a local farmer and president of the Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association .

Yuma produces about 90% of the leafy greens for the U.S. in the winter. They’re hoping with the broadband system more companies will be attracted to test technology in Yuma.

“In our intense agricultural system we have the ability to farm year-round, so there’s a lot of advantages for companies to come in, test new products and develop new products,” Pasquinelli says.

Broadband Network is Fueling Yuma’s High-Tech Agricultural Future

From autonomous drones and tractors to water monitoring, the broadband system will allow agriculture to connect.

“Farming is not the farming of yesterday. This is not your mom and pops farm,” says Jonathan Lines , a Yuma County supervisor who helped get the project up and running. “This is a high-tech business for food production here in the United States.”

When it comes to herbicide and pesticide applications, the broadband system will allow for farmers to apply a much smaller droplet using a drone rather than an airplane or helicopter. Tractor and tech updates can be made in the field instead of having to be taken out of production and connected to a computer.

“It is a large game changer for our community as well as our county. If we want more sensors and more automation, we need the bandwidth to do it,” Pasquinelli says.

Gov. Hobbs Backs Broadband Network to Modernize Arizona Agriculture

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is in full support of the broadband network. In November 2025, Gov. Hobbs visited Yuma for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and to sign two bills. SB1320 and SB1661 are both meant to help support the project in some capacity:

SB 1320 updated the legal definition of “implements of husbandry,” otherwise known as farm equipment, to include autonomous equipment. This allows for the autonomous farm equipment like tractors to drive short distances on public roads.
SB 1661 created a legal structure for the broadband service district authority. This authority would be in charge of things such as facilitating the expansion and maintenance of broadband infrastructure.

Pasquinelli says these bills, along with the broadband project, will be helpful for Yuma farmers as they continue to navigate this technological boom. When the broadband network and autonomous technology are in full force, they can help Yuma farmers address labor challenges.

“The farm workforce is aging, and it’s more and more difficult to get labor out of Mexico, so automation is going to be really key as the workforce diminishes,” says Paul Brierly , director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture .

$6 Million Broadband Project Hopes to Attract Younger Workforce

The broadband network might also be able to solve the aging workforce by attracting more university students. Brierly believes with the research and investment tied to the network, along with Yuma’s landscape, it can be a hot spot for young scholastic minds.

“With climate change, more of the world is having to produce food in arid climates, so what we solve in Yuma County, and in Arizona, will apply and be useful all around the world,” he explains.

The project is set to cost around $6 million and the broadband network is expected to be up and running by the end of summer in August.

“Not only does that allow Yuma County farmers to use the latest technology but also this is going to be the most connected production area in the world,” Brierly says.

Copper Thieves Cuffed by New Farm Security Innovation

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 14:32:40 GMT

Copper theft, at the bull’s-eye of agriculture crime since at least the 1990s, finally has a heavyweight foe on the farm—a watchman that never sleeps.

Amid the highest copper prices in history and 30-plus years of ag equipment destruction, Cop-R-Lock provides unprecedented theft prevention, contends Bobby Rader. “It’s as close to having a human being standing at your pump site, even in the most rural areas, as you can possibly get.”

Copper hit an all-time high of $5.96 per pound in 2025, triggering a blitz of theft across farms, substations, construction sites, telecommunications infrastructure, and numerous other industry hubs. Copper larceny sucks over $1 billion from the U.S. economy each year.

“From seed to water to machinery, we’ve got phenomenal innovation in every area of agriculture, except in the ag crime space,” says Rader, Chief of Police for Porterville, Calif. “Cop-R-Lock is the answer and there’s never been anything like it.”

Insult to Injury
A red metal plague is raging. Copper wire is easy to steal, and easy to sell at a scrapyard’s backdoor. Ground zero of copper theft arguably is central California’s Tulare County, often ranked as the No. 1 ag-producing county in the U.S.

Each year, Tulare and its surrounding Central Valley counties grow tens of billions of dollars in thirsty crops demanding water. The region is covered by pumps and irrigation systems housing a massive volume of copper wiring. Throw a proverbial rock, hit a pump. Drive a quarter mile in any direction, pass two or three pumps.

“This is not the California you see on television,” explains Rader, who led Tulare County’s Agricultural Crimes Unit for almost 16 years. “This is cowboy and ag country. This is rural America. It’s a place where drug addicts, particularly meth or heroin users, prey on pumps and steal copper. There’s an incredibly high amount of agriculture production here, and therefore, it’s a magnet for copper thieves.”

Tulare County is a flat valley maze of citrus and tree nut groves, i.e., plenty of pumps and farm sites just feet off the road with no line of sight for producers, landowners, or passersby.

“Up to now, copper theft has been easy,” Rader describes. “A criminal drives around at night, pulls 10’ off the road, and rips all the copper from a well, and nobody sees them and nobody hears them and nobody interrupts them. There is no immediate consequence, and the theft might not be discovered for days.”

“Cut off the ability to hide in the dark unaffected by consequence,” Rader says. “The opportunity belongs to the farmer and law enforcement now.”

(Photo by Farmblox)

Copper theft occurs year-round, but peaks from November to March, when fields and groves are often unmonitored and pumps are shut down. “It can easily happen during summertime and irrigation season, but generally, it happens over winter, when guys aren’t checking their pumps. If you’re a copper thief, you can go out at night and hit five or six pumps in one area, and nobody’s going to know about it for weeks. Law enforcement can’t get involved until it’s far too late.”

The copper theft burden shouldered by farmers is extraordinarily heavy. A thief hitting a small pump system might yield a mere $150 return in recyclable value, yet easily inflict $5,000-$7,000 in damage to the farmer-owner. However, if the given site houses multiple pumps and panels, the damage skyrockets to $100,000-plus. Insult to injury, the thieves often return and steal from the same sites after repairs.

“The worst I’ve ever seen at one site that I’ve personally investigated was about $150,000,” Rader notes. “That was the cost for the electrical contractor to come to the site, repair everything, and put new wire back.”

Multiplied across county and country, copper theft costs are staggering.

No more, Rader insists. The blue-collar lawman, raised in farm fields and shaped by a career at the frontline of ag crime, has developed a ferocious solution.

“Cut off the ability to hide in the dark unaffected by consequence. The opportunity belongs to the farmer and law enforcement now. Cop-R-Lock .”

Consequences Before Damage
What is Cop-R-Lock? Rader’s self-engineered tech innovation to protect farms from copper theft in real-time via a trigger wire attached to a sensor. The system protects a well system before theft and damage begin.

“A sensor is installed at the pump site. A trigger wire is integrated into the conduit systems at pump and panel, on the inside and outside,” Rader says. “That creates consequences immediately triggering Cop-R-Lock when anyone starts to cut the conduit or open the panels.”

The consequences are immediate and two-fold. One, extremely bright lights and a screaming siren go off. “It’s an absolutely overwhelming volume and creates a physiological response of stress in a thief.”

“We’ve got phenomenal innovation in every area of agriculture, except in the ag crime space,” says Rader. “Cop-R-Lock is the answer and there’s never been anything like it.”

(Photo by Farmblox)

Two, mass notifications are triggered. “It’s all controlled by an app. Whoever you put in the contact list is going to get the alert of the precise location where the attempted theft occurred. It can be anybody including family, employees, and local law enforcement. Everybody knows right away the system is being tampered with.”

“Literally, it shrinks the thief’s window down to minutes instead of hours, and it also ensures weeks don’t go by without someone knowing about the theft attempt.”

The tech, with a price tag under $4,000 per unit, extends beyond pumps and irrigation, and protects fencing, vehicles, batteries, and more.

“Run a trigger wire through chain link fence, or run it through multiple pieces of equipment, or anything else on a farm. Any cutting of that wire means instant notification to the owner. Noise, lights, notifications, and consequences—before damage.”

Genesis
After almost two decades trailing outlaws, Rader has seen every shade of ag crime. When he helmed the Agricultural Crimes Unit, 10 p.m. calls from frustrated farmers were a steady part of the job. “I’d hustle out and try to help, so furious over what some meth-head had done to another hard-working farmer. I grew up in these fields. I’m an agriculture guy and I care. These criminals steal several hundred dollars in copper, but leave behind tens of thousands in damage for a farmer. Or they leave behind a farmer who suddenly can’t irrigate and loses even more money. The whole thing drove me crazy.”

In early 2024, Rader was drowning a pot of leaded coffee at 3 a.m., wrestling his frustrations while considering how to stop a serial copper bandit who wrecked a chain of sites across Tulare County.

“I kept asking myself for a simpler solution. What are we missing? I’d searched the internet for years for something that instantaneously cut off opportunity, but there was nothing out there except another form of the latest, greatest game camera alarm.”

Prior to law enforcement, Rader was a contractor. Translated: His back pocket contains a mix of mechanical and electrical know-how. “I was standing by my kitchen counter, holding a coffee cup, and it hit me like a bolt.”

Rader grabbed a napkin and pen, and drew a blueprint. Two hours later, he transferred the scrawl to a notepad: Cop-R-Lock was born.

Assisted by a local engineer, Rader built five prototypes on a shoestring budget and filed for a patent. “I needed help and that’s where FarmBlox stepped up. They understood what farmers are going through and recognized how bad copper theft it. They jumped on it and turned it into what we have today, which is a protection tool for any farmer across the country or world.”

“We mail Cop-R-Lock to farmers and they either install it or get an electrician to do it,” Rader adds. “It’s an amazingly simple system to install and very easy to operate. One thing for certain, copper theft is not going away. The thieves are coming, but we’re ready with a tool that cuts off opportunity right from the get-go.”

At the Heart
Methods for copper theft prevention vary by farm, ranging from steel cages, wire frames, fences, and concrete poured around conduits. Rader’s innovation is common-sense technology, he insists. “It’s simple and strikes at the heart of the problem. We’re taking away a thief’s opportunity.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Outraged Farmers Blame Ag Monopolies as Catastrophic Collapse Looms

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

How Does Autonomous Machinery Stack Up Against Labor Costs on Midwest Row Crop Farms?

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:32:13 GMT

A first-of-its-kind academic analysis looks at labor rates and current autonomous solutions to spur a discussion on the tipping point for when the technology pays. Published by Chad Feichter, ag economist at Purdue, and PhD student Josh Strine, the recently released study looks at large-scale autonomous farming equipment and a Midwestern 50-50 corn/soybean farm.

“We were puzzled by what could potentially be the returns to these large autonomous machines because it seems that’s at least the trend of where we’re going,” Feichter says. “Also the idea there’s a labor shortage seems to be what’s motivating the conversation.”

The economists started with an economic farm-planning model originally developed at Purdue 60 years ago, updated it and plugged in a series of factors:

Labor rates
Production costs
Field size
Machinery/subscription costs
Equipment efficiency

The takeaway: Comparatively, autonomy is still an expensive alternative to average farm labor rates. Per the analysis, autonomy pays off when the labor rate is greater than $44 per hour.

“Currently, with where labor rates are, the autonomy solution across the board isn’t probably what we need in the immediate term, based on what we understand about how autonomy works and the productivity of autonomy,” Feichter says. “But if there’s a farmer who cannot find labor, autonomous machines will allow those acres to be farmed.”

Feichter says the current technology platforms installed on large-scale machines aren’t a one-for-one substitute for a human operator for a few reasons.

Profitability of autonomy hinges on three things:

the cost of autonomy subscriptions
the field efficiency of the machines
how much human supervision they still require

Co-author Strine says the ROI of autonomy is operation-specific to how the efficiencies of autonomy are realized. Their analysis included wide ranges in the variables to explore likely scenarios with today’s technology so as efficiencies improve there can be a comparison.

“Right now, the efficiency of the autonomy isn’t an advantage versus humans,” Strine says. “Maybe they will quickly get to 100% human efficiency, and it’s possible that it will surpass just having somebody driving that tractor. However, right now, oversight hours are required and the on-road transport is required.”

Where could autonomy pay off the soonest—Fiechter says it’s where high value tasks, in field efficiency and tightness in labor intersect.

“There are really high-value tasks, where you could potentially alleviate the labor challenge in the short run,” Fiechter says. “Maybe harvest is one of those where we would really see a benefit of having autonomous machines, whereas in planting time, it may not be quite as important.”

Manufacturers Report No Humans Have Been Displaced by Autonomous Tractors

Craig Rupp founded Sabanto, which sells autonomy systems to be outfitted on mid-range hp tractors.

“I had an epiphany after 50 systems,” Rupp says. “I’m not solving the labor problem. Farmers may buy as if we’re replacing labor, but they keep the labor, and it’s about quality of life. It’s about not spending 12 to 16 hours a day when they get behind or have to work weekends. And they are using autonomy to scale their operation—they are taking on more acres.”

Earlier this year Sabanto published a case study looking at seeding 10,000 acres with a traditional 4WD high-horsepower set up versus running three Sabanto outfitted tractors. The company’s analysis did not include labor costs, but evaluating the investment and operational costs, Sabanto says a traditional setup costs $18.88/acre the three Sabanto equipped machines cost $6.27/acre. You can read the whole report here.

His company has sold more than 200 systems in the past two years.

“We’ve put no people out of work,” Rupp says. “Farmers will adopt autonomy for labor when it’s the last choice they have.”

Michael Porter, large tractor marketing manager at John Deere, shares an anecdote from a customer over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“A great example this year is we had two machines running on Thanksgiving, and they literally ran while the farmers had their Thanksgiving dinner,” Porter says. “And the next day, when they got back out there, they had a couple hundreds acres already tilled so they can continue moving on with that fall field work.”

The quality of life autonomy adds to as well as the agronomic value of timely field work are added values manufacturers point to for being benefits of adopting these systems.

“That’s something that’s hard to quantify, football games on Friday nights, dinner with the family, all those things that’s a big part of it. Those quality of life things, they’re really hard to quantify, but people experience them, and once they experience them, they don’t want to go back,” Porter says.

John Deere autonomous systems cost between $40,000 and $45,000 for the kit, plus dealership install and yearly subscription fee, which is $10,000 for unlimited acres for tillage, for example.

Dinen Subramaniam, product launch manager for Outrun at PTx Trimble, has lead their team to deploy autonomous grain cart systems and tillage systems in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Georgia.

He shares a story from a customer in Nebraska who it’s a father-son farming duo, and the OutRun grain cart allows the father to truck grain while the son harvests supported by the autonomous grain cart. That 3,500 acre farm has been able to finish harvest in 20% to 25% less time.

“It’s really about the flexibility of the deployment of labor that autonomy gives you,” Subramaniam says. “Like having a grain truck driver rather than a grain cart driver, or having someone who can take a five hour break during tillage and let the autonomous system run.”

AGCO’s PTx OutRun tillage solution is $44,000 for hardware plus a $9,000 annual cost. OutRun’s modular model also includes autonomous grain cart operations, with additional tasks in development. A combined tillage/grain cart setup costs $55,000 for hardware and $15,000 annually.

Subramaniam also highlights agronomic benefits for fall field work getting done timelier when autonomous systems are used.

“Instead of straining into December with harvest trying to get that crop off the ground, autonomy can help reduce late harvest yield loss, which can be a 3% to 5% reduction,” he says. “We talk about an ideal harvest season, but the reality is there are always weather delays, mechanical delays, and more.”

There’s a trickle down effect of timely harvest, fall tillage and fall application.

“From a tillage point of view, we’ve also learned that there’s other benefits as well from better incorporation of crop residue, getting to tillage sooner so that that crop residue can break down,” he says.

The Purdue economists agree this is a space to watch as what’s possible with technology and the escalating labor issues intersect.

Living Sensors Turn Soybeans into Fungal Disease Detectives

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:07:29 GMT

For Aidan Kleinschmit, trying to get the upper hand over white mold disease in soybeans used to involve a frustrating amount of guesswork.

White mold can lurk in soybean fields undetected for weeks, causing significant damage before any visible symptoms appear. Kleinschmit says his annual struggle with the disease turned a corner this past season when he decided to trial the use of CropVoice from InnerPlant.

“I remember they sent out an alert on a Saturday night about white mold being detected, and by Monday we had decided we were going to treat,” recounts Kleinschmit, who farms in northeast Nebraska with his dad and brother.

“That put us way ahead of the white mold, because by the time you see it some damage is done,” Kleinschmit adds. “You might get disease suppression from a fungicide at that point, but you’re going to have some yield loss.”

Early Detection: A Game-Changer For Disease Control
The proactive treatment Kleinschmit made included whole-field fungicide applications as well as some targeted spot spraying with a drone over 500-plus acres. The payoff was evident in yield results Kleinschmit saw at harvest.

“We sprayed one entire field in our bottom ground, and it made about 86 bushels per acre,” he says. “That was well over, probably 25 bushels better, than what some of the other fields in our bottom ground yielded.”

Gary Schaefer, chief commercial officer at InnerPlant, says the big takeaway with CropVoice is the tool gives farmers real-time disease detection, informing decisions on whether to spray a fungicide. This directly addresses the ambiguity that farmers like Kleinschmit have long faced with disease management decisions.

“CropVoice is designed to deliver ROI by either saving costs in years when spraying isn’t necessary, or by enabling timely, effective action during heavy disease pressure, significantly improving the efficacy and financial return of fungicide applications,” Schaefer says.

While Schaefer doesn’t say what the return-on-investment for using CropVoice is, he contends that for every dollar a farmer spends on technology or an input “they should get at least $3 back,” a number Kleinschmit affirms as being on par for his expectations.

A ‘Cell Phone Tower’ for Soybean Fields
CropVoice is the first product InnerPlant has designed for farmers. How the technology works hinges on a seed biotech trait the company has developed that turns soybeans into living sensors that detect disease at the molecular level. The soybeans emit a fluorescent optical signal within 48 hours of a fungal infection – before any visible symptoms appear.

The company is placing its soybeans in sentinel plots that act like an early alert system in a defined geography. CropVoice analyzes the data coming from the plots 24/7. If a foliar disease moves into the plots, farmers and retailers working with InnerPlant are alerted that the disease is in their area.

Schaefer says to think of the sentinel plots as working like a network of cell towers for farmers whose fields are the cell phones.
“What you’re subscribing to is the network of cell towers that gives coverage for a broad area,” he explains.

For 2026, InnerPlant is placing 100 sentinel plots in fields across Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota to achieve the cell tower network effect for farmers in those states. Each plot will range in size from one-eighth acre to one-fourth of an acre.

Cultural Practices Play An Important Role
The soybeans grown in the sentinel plots mimic the cultural practices representative of soybean growers in each state. The strategy ensures highly relevant data for farms that are enrolled in InnerPlant’s program, which is implemented through strategic partnerships with retailers, Schaefer reports.

Farmers enroll their soybean acres in the InnerPlant network for a fee ($6 per acre for 2026). Retailers facilitate the process, mapping fields into the company’s program for retailers’ continuous monitoring throughout the growing season.

Participating farmers get weekly scouting reports, which include a disease score indicating risk levels in their area along with a detailed map showing any disease progression in their area. In addition, the company provides real-time disease alerts that are pushed directly to farmers via text anytime CropVoice detects a disease in the sentinel plots in thearea.

“The plants will turn on to any fungal pathogen,” Schaefer reports. He says end-of-year scouting reports from 2025 in Nebraska and Illinois revealed the detection of between five and seven different fungal pathogens in the company’s plots.

Kleinschmit says the proximity of the sentinel plots to his soybean fields and the early text alerts are two of the factors that sold him on enrolling a portion of his acres in the program.

“We’re only going to spray acres that we think are going to be affected by white mold at this point. I thought the technology really gave us a good benefit there,” says Kleinschmit.

“There are so many variables and moving parts in farming, so if there’s a way to help minimize the guesswork to help us make a good decision, I’m going to look into it and try it,” he adds.

Other technologies are also being explored by researchers for early soybean disease detection, such as hyperspectral imaging for charcoal rot and the Sporecaster smartphone app from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The latter predicts white mold risk based on weather data and field conditions.

Expanding the Network: Coverage for 2026 and Beyond
InnerPlant expects to scale up to more than 500,000 soybean acres across Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota in 2026 and plans to expand beyond those states over time.

To learn more about the technology, farmers can connect with participating ag retailers or reach out directly to InnerPlant.
Schaefer says the companyis hosting demos this winter, offering a firsthand look at this real-time, plant-based technology that could redefine how farmers address key diseases in the future.

He adds that InnerPlant will start field testing a corn fungal sensor in 2026, aiming to expand the plant-based disease detection technology to even more farmers and geographies in the coming years.

InnerPlant is partnering with local ag retailers to introduce CropVoice. The 2026 retailer network includes:

Illinois
Sun Ag

Iowa
Agriland
FSC
NEW
Nutrien

Nebraska
Aurora Cooperative
CHS
Hwy 75-Chem
Norder Supply
Nutrien
Rawhide Fertilizer, LLC

South Dakota
CHS
Nutrien

WinField United Deploys Artificial Intelligence To Improve Its Agronomic Adviser Retention

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:17:42 GMT

It takes new solutions to fix problems otherwise yet to be solved. And that’s what WinField United sees as the opportunity to use artificial intelligence to help with team member retention. Specifically, as explained by Leah Anderson President, WinField United and SVP, Land O’Lakes, Inc, one in four retail sales agronomists in their system (Winfield United and its retail owners) churns out of the system every year.

To support their retail agronomists with decision-making and product recommendations, WinField United partnered with Microsoft to take its 800-page Land O’Lakes Crop Protection guide and build a copilot called Oz (named for the abbreviation for Ounce).

When prompted, Oz delivers fast, mobile-friendly responses. It is currently in its pilot phase with expected availability across the entire WinField United network next year.

Anderson says the project has two goals:

Support retail agronomists in their recommendations
Support decisions with a focus on return on investment

“This is about helping our agronomists be as productive and effective as they can be with the time they have,” Anderson says.

She says the Crop Protection Guide has been a valuable resource and making it more accessible with the technology will bring more value from the data sourced from the company’s Innovation Center, Answer Plots and more.

“Especially in this moment when farmers are under so much financial stress, there isn’t an ability to waste a dime on a product spend that’s not going to yield an ROI,” she says. “It’s about how we get the information in the hands of retailers and agronomists and farmers faster, better, so that they have more confidence as they’re making those decisions on their farm and managing their crop every year.”

More AI To Be Embedded In the Business

Anderson says this is phase one for Oz and signs of more of what’s to come from how WinField United uses artificial intelligence. Regarding tools for agronomists, she sees adding predictive analytics, emerging pests and more products and technologies. She sees how AI will be applied on the business side of WinField United as a distributor with logistics and predictive tools for inventories.

“We’ll continue to work on the overall efficiency of how product is flowing and moving,” she says. “We’ll work on getting to a point where, you’re confident the right thing is in the right place at the right time for the right purpose, even before you get the call from the retailer saying they need it.”

And AI has the potential to help transform the logistics of the business to meet the current demand. Speaking to how U.S. farmers typically plant their acres of corn and soybeans in a three-week timespan, the supply chain is “overbuilt” for that small time window.

She continues, “in order to make sure that ultimately farmers have everything they need, all of us, whether it’s retailers or distributors or basic manufacturers, we’re all doing everything we can to build really big piles of stuff and get it out into the country to be ready for whatever it is that the grower’s going to need. My observation about that is that it’s pretty inefficient today. The reality is, there’s too many piles of stuff, and they’re too big. And a lot of times, the piles just get returned back at the end of the season.”

WinField United will experiment in how to use AI to drive more efficiency in their supply chain.

“It really bloats a lot of people’s balance sheets, working capital, with too much inventory. We’re paying too much to store stuff,” she says. “There’s lots of inefficiency that comes from not having a really good demand sensing capability and appropriately designed forecasts. Everybody does their best today. This isn’t being critical in any way, but you think about what AI can start doing for us to be better modeling demand and forecasting, so that we can be smarter about how big those piles of stuff really need to be, and where they need to be.”

She concludes saying AI isn’t about replacing people or talent but rather doing business differently with an aim of doing it better.

“This gives us an opportunity, to show people the power of AI being an and–not an or–not a replacement, but an enhancer,” she says. “And so there’s a piece of this too just getting comfortable with what AI can be and what it can do for all of our shared businesses.”

Bitcoin Set to Revolutionize US Agriculture?

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:25:42 GMT

Pebble to landslide, Bitcoin is approaching agriculture and its impact will be seismic, echoing the benchmarks of farming history, including cotton gin, steel plow, mechanization, and biotech crops. Or will it?

Only 10 years back, on the turnrow or at the seed house, the mention of Bitcoin elicited mockery. Five years back, laughter. Now? The derision is replaced by inquiry.

Cryptocurrency, as a store of value to a medium of exchange, is on an economic collision course with agriculture, set to change American farms forever, contends a growing chorus of voices within the ag chain.

“Bitcoin is an absolute agriculture necessity going forward,” says producer Zack Smith. “People just don’t realize it yet. Soon, they will.”

First Bird to Fly
Bitcoin was created in 2009. In the eyes of critics, it was a lie agreed upon, or a pyramid built to topple. However, 16 years beyond Bitcoin’s birth, the online currency, thriving beyond the fat fingers of government, is among the fastest adopted technologies in world history.

In extreme northcentral Iowa’s Winnebago County, a stone’s throw below the Minnesota line, Smith works 1,200 acres of row crops and raises a small amount of livestock. He doesn’t flinch at the “first bird to fly takes all the arrows” maxim, whether innovating via wide-row corn, strip intercropping, stock cropping , or Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is the currency of the future, and that includes agriculture,” says Iowa grower Zach Smith.

(Photo by Stock Cropper)

“It’s just a matter of time for Bitcoin in agriculture, and I don’t mean far off. In 10 or 15 years, Bitcoin could be a normal part of a farm transaction. It’s a question of when critical inertia hits, but Bitcoin will be utilized by folks in agriculture in the near future.”

“The people at the top of agriculture in power, the CEOs, big-time commodity traders, and agribusiness, are looking at Bitcoin as a hedge against dollar debasement,” he continues. “Again, it’s coming fast.”

Out of the chute, Smith sees Bitcoin as a store of value. “Look what’s happened to land. So many outside investors have entered the market, producing inflated land values that make no financial sense with the value of what is being produced.”

“That’s where I see Bitcoin making its first impact. As investors discover there’s something better than land and just as finite, something you don’t pay property taxes on, something you don’t have to maintain, something that is portable, I think land prices will drop closer to utility value, allowing young farmers better opportunities to compete in the market.”

At present, income surpluses are akin to snowflakes in hell, but Smith urges producers to prepare for change. “For those who put their fiat money into Bitcoin, and are patient, I believe they’ll be able to buy two to three times the land in the near future they would have otherwise.”

“The money printer isn’t stopping,” he adds. “Bitcoin is the offramp to the debasement problem.”

Jumping the Treadmill
A lone voice a decade-plus in the past, Vance Crowe has long been a proponent of Bitcoin in agriculture. Host of Ag Tribes and founder of Legacy Interviews , Crowe is adamant: Bitcoin is transformative for farming.

“Just a few years ago, people reacted negatively when I talked about Bitcoin. That’s been replaced with genuine questions and consideration. Bitcoin is going to become deeply embedded in how the business of agriculture functions, and people who’ve been trying to preserve the value of their dollars are going to move those dollars out of land and into Bitcoin. Guys who’ve gotten a 6-7% return on land are looking over at Bitcoin and seeing a 65 percent return every year for the last 15 years. The wake-up is happening in real time.”

“Five, 10, or 15 years, it’s going to completely change agriculture’s game,” says Vance Crowe, regarding Bitcoin.

(Photo by Legacy Interviews)

In March 2025, President Trump signed an order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve . Three months later, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop plans toward the use of cryptocurrency as a mortgage loan asset .

“It’s only a matter of time before ag lending starts realizing it’s a lot better to collateralize loans with Bitcoin, than to do so with cattle or maybe even land,” Crowe projects. “If you collateralize a loan with cattle or land, if that person doesn’t meet their obligations, the lender must assess, load, or sell. Only then does a lender get the money. Bitcoin bundles all of that into a 10-minute fix. Ag lending will become heavily enmeshed in Bitcoin.”

Government maintains the exorbitant privilege of seigniorage, i.e., printing reams of bills with no backing. Need more, print more. Conversely, Bitcoin is limited to a 21-million cap. Finite.

No central issuer; no board of directors; no CEO; and no marketing department. Just a vehicle, according to Crowe, carrying unprecedented opportunity for agriculture. “Farmers have been put in a position where they spend as much of the money they have coming in as possible, both for tax reasons, but also because the value of their dollars always goes down.”

(For a basic primer, see What is Bitcoin? The Explanation That Clicks )

“Bitcoin provides an unprecedented option where a farmer can say, ‘I’ve made this money and I don’t want to risk its value. I’m putting it in Bitcoin.’ That provides a way to jump off the treadmill of constantly buying new tractors, building more sheds, or constantly growing.”

Fundamental change is knocking, Crowe contends: “Five, 10, or 15 years, it’s going to completely change agriculture’s game.”

Proverbial Lightbulb
Raised in hardscrabble 1980s row cropping in southcentral Nebraska’s Adams County, Kevin Kimle watched his father barter. Side of beef for a farm repair; load of pigs for a used semi.

“It’s in our agriculture muscle memory: a means to trade in a different currency,” says Kimle, now an Iowa-based entrepreneur and agriculture economist, and founder of BitCorn . He serves as Rastetter Chair of Agricultural Entrepreneurship and director of agricultural entrepreneurship programs at Iowa State University.

“I view Bitcoin as one of the most important inventions in human history,” says Kevin Kimle.

(Photo by BitCorn)

“We’re at the beginning of a transition to a Bitcoin standard not only in the U.S., but globally, and I think agriculture is a natural first mover on the leading edge of that transition.”

Practically, what does that mean to a farmer? A seventh saved, according to Kimle . As in, annually turning a seventh of a crop to Bitcoin, generating at least two crops worth of Bitcoin by the end of seven years.

He still owns farmland in Nebraska and began researching Bitcoin in 2021. “I’m about four years into this. But my own simulation, if I had sold 10% of my grain for Bitcoin instead of dollars, I’d have four years of crop in Bitcoin today.”

In summer 2025, Kimle set up a business bridge between Bitcoin and traditional agriculture— BitCorn —intent on giving farmers tools, basics, and the means to make transactions.

“The proverbial light bulb went off. At BitCorn, we’re providing a place where a farmer can learn Bitcoin. Agriculture is packed with incredibly innovative entrepreneurs, and their ideas are going to take us down the Bitcoin road.”

Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. “I view Bitcoin as one of the most important inventions in human history,” Kimle explains, “in the ballpark with the wheel, plow, printing press, electricity, and anything else.”

Our Children’s Money
Dennis Campbell is at the helm of Crystal Creek Enterprises, in east Iowa’s Clinton County, working with corn, soybeans and some wheat acres. Crystal Creek manages a portfolio of 10,000+ acres of owned, rented and custom farmed land.

“There’s a way to wake up and say, ‘I can buy $500 worth of something that’ll hold value as good as or better than land,’” asserts Dennis Campbell.

(Crystal Creek Enterprises)

Starting in 1854, Campbell’s forefathers scratched dirt outside Grand Mound, within proximity of the Mississippi River. His farming bloodline reaches back to Antebellum America, but although Campbell shepherds past legacy, his eyes are locked on the horizon. Internationally renowned for emerging technology, Crystal Creek is a consistent mecca for visiting ag delegations from Africa, Australia, Europe, and South America since 2013. In 2025, Campbell opened a BitCorn node on his farm. He jumped in the Bitcoin pool in 2023.

At present, Campbell estimates 85% of U.S. farmers take zero notice of Bitcoin. “They are nose to the grindstone, trying to juggle work, debt, equipment, and family, all while things get worse financially. I don’t know any more than anybody else, but I believe Bitcoin, at a minimum, is becoming a major tool in the toolbox to protect ourselves against an out-of-control government.”

“Just look at crop insurance, alone,” he continues. “You can spend $45 to $55 an acre insuring 250-bushel an acre APH corn. That’s crazy. I sure as hell won’t make 50 bucks an acre this year. Even if Bitcoin only gave some independence back on crop insurance, that by itself is enough for me.”

Does Campbell see growers investing a seventh of a crop in Bitcoin?

“We’ve got to put a portion of our proceeds in. If I could do that and have sufficient comfort to lower my 85% revenue harvest priced option insurance policy to 70% and lower my cost from $50 bucks to $20, that’s quite a savings account. Every year, regardless of how tight our belts are, we need to allocate a percentage of proceeds above and beyond our principal payments for land and green or red paint into something that can’t be debased and diluted by runaway government spending by 535 people in Washington, D.C.”

In 2025, Dennis Campbell opened a BitCorn node on his Iowa farm.

(Photo by Crystal Creek Enterprises)

Debt and the next generation loom large in Campbell’s view of Bitcoin.

“We’re spending our children’s money now and that’s what debt is. That’s what debt creates—a burden on future society and on future fruits of labor. It’s madness and we all talk about land as the best store of financial resources, but land is difficult to accumulate at a fractional pace. It’s not easy to wake up and say, ‘I’m gonna go buy 80 acres today,’ but there’s a way to wake up and say, ‘I can buy $500 worth of something that’ll hold value as good as or better than land.’ Bitcoin.”

Adios to the Rulebook
“The smartest thing somebody in agriculture could do is go down and borrow a bunch of money against traditional collateral and use that money to buy Bitcoin.”

Bold words. However, Matt Gilbert maintains Bitcoin future for agriculture is inevitable and backs his contention with receipts. Raised in the vast fields of Texas cotton country, Gilbert is an esteemed entrepreneur with specialization in mergers and acquisitions. He calls balls and strikes.

“Before my lifetime ends, the old playbook will be obsolete, and those prepared today will lead the charge into tomorrow’s agriculture economy,” says Matt Gilbert.

(Photo by Gilbert & Associates)

“Modern farmers invest heavily in equipment, infrastructure, and resources, yet the real paradigm shift lies in leveraging advanced financial tools. Up and down the agriculture supply chain, whether you’re manufacturing machinery or distributing fertilizer, nearly every participant depends on traditional lines of credit,” Gilbert explains.

“Financing in dollars is trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns—a negative loop. But using Bitcoin as a store of value creates an entirely positive feedback loop. If you’ve held Bitcoin during any four-year window since its inception, historically your purchasing power has multiplied, matching up to nearly 12 times what a dollar-based payment could achieve. This shift isn’t incremental—it’s transformational for agricultural economics.”

Adios to land or physical assets as necessary collateral? Yes, Gilbert says. “Choose any era in history: mass-market automobiles, television, the arrival of the Internet. Bitcoin’s adoption curve is exponentially steeper than any previous innovation. It stands alone as an asset that appreciates with unrivaled velocity, fundamentally altering the financial landscape for growers and agribusinesses.”

Agriculture trade is conducted via the U.S. dollar, which loses at least 3-5% per year in value. Tack on the price of inflation, and farmers see 10%-plus of dollar value slip away, annually. “Those numbers are incredibly disheartening,” Gilbert details. “For example, if someone got paid for a crop in 2023, sat on a little of the money, and decided to spend it in 2026, they’re going to have somewhere between 25-40% less purchasing power with the dollars they saved. That’s a giant problem. Bitcoin solves that problem.”

Bitcoin’s adoption rate has been phenomenally steep.

(Graphic by BlackRock)

“The implication for farmers and ag professionals is clear: Understand the currency paradigm shift, because the money you’re using, the dollar, is undermining your business more than you realize,” he says.

“My advice to those in agriculture is to leverage the advantages of both systems; pay expenses in dollars, but demand income in Bitcoin—the most secure and robust cryptocurrency. Weak currencies burden, but robust currencies liberate. It’s time for agriculture to pivot toward strength.”

What about buying farmland? Tokenization, Gilbert posits. “It’s already happening. Commercial real estate has been tokenized in the last couple of years. Agriculture assets are going to follow. Tokenization is the future, not theory. It’s reality. Commercial properties have already been fractionalized on the blockchain (the network Bitcoin runs on), and agriculture is next in line.”

Think apartment complex or condo in New York City. The building can be bought by tokenizing the real estate, meaning multiple people buy a portion. One buyer in Kansas; another in Indiana; more elsewhere, all purchasing 500 square feet apiece via the blockchain.

“Imagine democratizing rural assets. A family in Iowa, an investor in Mississippi, and stakeholders from across the nation jointly tokenizing a farm. The blockchain ledger transparently records every transaction, making ownership, lending, and risk radically clearer and more efficient than ever before. This will overhaul deed registries, middlemen, banking, and title services, drastically cutting costs and speeding processes.”

Markets also benefit, Gilbert believes. A futures contract is typically bundled in lots of 100, whether hedging crops, fuel, or fertilizer. Bitcoin splits the bundle into fractions of 1 million. “Instead of the current way things are primarily done, which is 100 units equals a contract, Bitcoin breaks that into a million pieces instead of 100 pieces, which means a far more level playing field for the person in agriculture versus the person in finance.”

The next 15 years will be telltale, Gilbert predicts. “Having studied the Bitcoin space since 2013, I’ve witnessed digital currency realize in a decade what it took the dollar more than a century to accomplish, without systemic debasement. Within the next fifteen years, financial rules governing agriculture will be rewritten, marking a generational inflection point. Before my lifetime ends, the old playbook will be obsolete, and those prepared today will lead the charge into tomorrow’s agriculture economy.”

What is Money?
Bitcoin naysayers abound. Ponzi party. Bernie Madoff special. Dot.com crash all over again. Sam Bankman-Fried unleashed. Cinderella at midnight .

Pitfalls? Certainly. Black swans. Always.

The Trump administration has generated strong support for Bitcoin, but the perspective of subsequent administrations is unknown. What about the Bitcoin blockchain—how secure will it be in years to come?

However, bolstered by steady gains and landmark promise, the past 16 years of Bitcoin have shown otherwise, contend Crowe, Kimle, Campbell, Gilbert, and Smith.

A handful of years in the past, Smith was a Bitcoin scoffer. Scam. Scheme. Trainwreck.

No more. He now sees Bitcoin as bell cow.

“It’s a question of when critical inertia hits, but Bitcoin will be utilized by folks in agriculture in the near future,” concludes producer Zach Smith.

(Photo by Stock Cropper)

“Whether Bitcoin is a store of value or medium of exchange in farming, it’ll be one or both,” Smith concludes. “Over the last 10 years, I’ve asked myself the hard question, ‘What is money?’ The best answer is to make the effort to find out for yourself. Go to Amazon and buy a copy of The Bitcoin Standard . Might be the most valuable $20 you’ll ever spend. Why? Because Bitcoin is the currency of the future, and that includes agriculture.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

3 Ways To Protect Your Ag Business from Cybersecurity Threats

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:57:59 GMT

Agriculture is in the bull’s-eye for threat actors trying to access business information. But as Chris Sherman says: “Our keys in the visor mentality” has many farmers trusting too much and putting too much at risk.

Sherman is the founder of Tech Support Farm, an IT and cybersecurity consulting business who works with farmers, co-ops, custom harvesters and more ag businesses to shore up their systems, lock down their sensitive information and stay attuned to emerging risks.

The FBI has listed agriculture as a critical infrastructure for cybersecurity.

So where do most farmers leave themselves vulnerable to hackers? Sherman shares these:

1. Email

Sherman points to email as the No. 1 priority for farmers on where to start in taking cybersecurity seriously.

“The amount of information and data we are sending via email leaves every farmer at risk — from our FSA staff, agronomists, banks and more,” he says. “Emails can be intercepted, all contents can be exposed, and no one is the wiser. It would be like a rural mail carrier, and when he drops the mail someone stands there opening it, reading it and closing the envelope and putting it back in the mailbox. Foolhardy to be using the free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo and others.”

Here are four steps to shore up your email:

Get a domain
Get a commercial email provider
Get a filtration software (which monitors what comes in)
Get a DMARC compliance service (which manages outbound emails, so no one spoofs you and encryption is done properly)

As an example of why this should be prioritized, Sherman tells the story of a farm business working on a land deal.

“A dad and son were just about ready to sign, and the dad got an email from the bank, at least it appeared to be from the bank, but it was a spoof encouraging them to e-sign,” he says. “And everyone signed, and it drained the bank accounts and blew up the deal.”

2. Be aware of your personal information shared, and embrace “herd immunity”

All to often, farmers don’t have passcodes on their phones.

“That’s like leaving your credit card at the bar,” Sherman says. “For some reason in agriculture we are running multimillion dollar businesses on residential-grade infrastructure.”

He says by the nature of the business, enrolling in government programs, immigration workforce programs (such as H-2A) and more, make your address, phone number and email readily accessible.

“It’s a wealth of opportunity for threat actors. We can’t leave our doors and windows open,” Sherman says. “So you have to protect yourself, and encourage your friends, neighbors and business partners to do the same. If we are all reducing our individual risk, we are reducing the overall risk.”

3. Use high-quality passwords

Sherman says good passwords are must-have on all your accounts, including your Wi-Fi.

“Too often, farmers have their password just be a duplicate of the network name. Or if a farmer’s favorite tractor is a John Deere 4450, 4450 is his pin for everything,” he says. “When we are on the internet, it’s like being in the big city, and you have to act accordingly.”

Scientists Team with NASA to Grow Crops in Space as Zero Gravity Yields New Discoveries for Farmers on Earth

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:25:52 GMT

As humans set their sights on living beyond Earth, one surprising challenge is emerging: how do we grow healthy crops in the uncharted environment of space?

Purdue University researchers, in partnership with NASA, are answering this question by experimenting with tomato plants aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Their groundbreaking work could pave the way for future space colonies—and even improve agriculture back on Earth.

From Earthly Challenges to Space Solutions

Plants, like humans, are susceptible to diseases caused by microbes, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. On Earth, these problems are manageable, but in the confines of a spacecraft or a Martian colony, a sick crop could spell disaster.

Stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) struggles to survive on Mars in “The Martian” motion picture that first came out in October 2015.

(20th Century Fox/The Martian)

Dr. Anjali Iyer-Pascuzzi, a professor of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue, has spent years collaborating with NASA engineers to develop the Advanced Plant Habitat—a growth chamber designed to give plants their best chance to thrive in space.

“For decades, NASA sent plants into space, but always in containers that weren’t ideal for growth,” Dr. Iyer-Pascuzzi explained. “With the Advanced Plant Habitat, we’ve finally created an environment where we can truly study and support plant development beyond Earth.”

Tomatoes Take Flight: Engineering Meets Biology

The journey from concept to space-ready experiment wasn’t easy. Denise Caldwell, a Purdue PhD candidate, described the difficulty of translating biological needs into engineering solutions.

“We faced problems like how to keep seeds in place and how much water to use,” Caldwell said. “I grew this successfully 22 times and so I felt confident that what we were doing was going to work.”

Their efforts paid off when, in December 2023, their tomato experiment launched to the ISS. By early 2024, astronauts began testing the system in space—an apex moment for Caldwell. “Watching from home with my children as the experiment began was surreal. We were learning how plants behave in ways we never could on Earth.”

Last week I saw plants for the first time in 4 months. I might have gotten a little teary. We get fresh fruit and veggies via our cargo vehicles and they provide welcome pops of color and scent, but it turns out this does not compare at all to seeing living plants and smelling… pic.twitter.com/AfxHemAUbz
— Loral O'Hara (@lunarloral) January 24, 2024

Unlocking New Knowledge for Earth and Beyond

One of the most exciting discoveries from the experiment is how microgravity reveals hidden aspects of plant biology.

“When you take away gravity, you start to see pathways and genes and functions that you normally wouldn’t see on Earth,” said Dr. Iyer-Pascuzzi. “So, for me as a scientist, that’s the really cool thing because we have this plant hormone that now we’re seeing connections, in space, when we remove the gravity, that we didn’t see here.”

These lessons have the potential to help farmers on Earth by unlocking new scientific knowledge about plant growth and resilience.

One key insight is that plants seem less concerned with the lack of gravity, as long as they receive the right light, nutrients, and carbon dioxide. However, some natural plant defenses are suppressed in space, meaning extra care will be needed to prevent disease.

Looking ahead, Dr. Iyer-Pascuzzi is optimistic: “Is it possible to grow crops on Mars? Absolutely—if we provide the right conditions.”

Stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) discovers his potato farm has been destroyed as he struggles to survive on Mars in “The Martian” motion picture. (20th Century Fox/October 2015)

(20th Century Fox/The Martian)

As Purdue’s team continues to analyze data from the ISS experiment, their work represents a giant leap for both human and plant kind. Their research isn’t just shaping the future of space travel—it’s also helping us better understand and improve agriculture right here at home.

Reference:

For more on Purdue’s space plant research, visit Tomatoes in spaceflight: A giant leap for human and plant kind.

FBN Spins Out Its Crop Protection Business, Focuses on Marketplace and Technology

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 15:01:57 GMT

Last week, just a few hours after Corteva announced its spin out dividing seeds from crop protection, Farmers Business Network (FBN) announced it is separating its businesses. Moving forward FBN will focus on its digital marketplace for farmers, and the newly launched Global Crop Solutions will be an independent supplier of crop protection products.

FBN leaders say the timing is coincidental. Their motive for the timing was brought about by the new fiscal year. But they offer both of the announcements together could be a sign of a trend of vertical integration getting unwound in the name of efficiency and focus.

“We’re doubling down, allotting capital on digital innovation for FBN’s future,” says Diego Casanello, CEO of FBN. “FBN’s core business is a digital commerce and fintech platform. We want farmers to be able to buy, finance, and market everything they need while sitting in their combines. These are technology challenges, so the core competence you need to be successful at FBN is different from managing the supply chain of the crop protection business.”

In the past 14 months, FBN has been refocusing its business. First, it spun off its insurance business, then its Gradable business into a joint-venture with ADM. Now with its crop protection business spin out, Casanello says the FBN marketplace will feature GCS products, such as Willowood USA branded products, via a strategic partnership, and GCS products will explore distribution beyond the FBN marketplace.

“The big unlock for GCS is the opportunity to serve the entire retail and co-op industry,” Casanello says. “It frees GCS of any channel conflicts and hits the ground running with one of the largest portfolios of products in the industry. And it frees FBN from similar constraints as we move to an open marketplace architecture. We are onboarding new sellers and their portfolios every week. We provide them the tools to manage pricing, marketing, and placement. FBN is open for business and we’ve had significant interest from additional partners before and after the announcement.”

FBN’s Marketplace Strategy

Currently, FBN says it has 120,000 farmer members in the U.S. and Canada. The business provides a marketplace with farm inputs and supplies, financial services and data-driven intelligence.

FBN co-founder Charles Baron says the FBN marketplace has expanded its product range to include crop protection, seed (with additional partner news coming soon), fertilizer, livestock products, veterinary pharmaceuticals, farm supplies and more.

“To farmers, there’s no change in their experience. And over time, we’ll bring an even broader assortment of goods,” Baron says. “You’ll be seeing announcements from us every two weeks or so about the suppliers coming on the platform. It’s one of the most exciting times in our history.”

The leaders say farmer use of e-commerce has increased every year since they launched, and in 2025 FBN served a record number of customers. “Farmers are really focusing on value right now and maximizing every dollar,” said Baron. And per their analytics roughly 35% of U.S. farmers visit FBN.com to browse inputs, apply for financing, or look for information.

The Future of GCS

As a newly formed independent crop protection supplier, GCS has a portfolio of 250 registrations on post-patent products. The company will specialize in sourcing, managing first mile logistics, developing new products and regulatory aspects.

To lead the business and its team, Amy Yoder, most recently EVP of FBN’s livestock division, is incoming CEO.

“Global Crop Solutions launches today as an independent powerhouse,” said Yoder, in a press release. “For the first time, our extensive portfolio and efficient global supply chain are fully available to all partners— from retailers, to distributors, to co-ops. Our independence unlocks immense growth potential and allows us to be the most reliable and collaborative partner to the entire agricultural industry.”

Take It Outside: Onetime Indoor Ag Pioneers See Opportunity Out In The Field

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 12:16:34 GMT

For the past year, the team at Soil Action has been working toward building an artificial intelligence driven product to sense soil nutrition in real-time. Whereas other companies have attempted to revolutionize soil testing before, co-founders Jack Oslan and Nate Storey say the AI tools available today are making what was once difficult or nearly impossible, possible.

“Soils are unknown and misunderstood,” Storey says. “We can use AI to understand soil better, and our goal is to come up with the instruments to solve the problem.”

Soil Action’s solution in progress includes building models and training models pairing near infrared spectroscopy with AI. Its goal is to reengineer the traditional process of sampling, shipping, agronomic recommendations, prescription files and applications while making it all in real-time. They are doing on-farm demonstrations this fall.

Before founding Soil Action, these two businessmen first met 12 years ago co-founded indoor agriculture startup Plenty. Storey’s time at Plenty was applying his laser focus on yield with innovation in algorithmic nutrition.

“I went into indoor ag because it was an area with the largest opportunity to drive yield. I have a lot of interest in yield,” he says. “In indoor, you can control everything and measure it–everything can be known in those systems and control every part of the process: root zone temperature, gas composition, and more.”

Now, Storey and Oslan want to bring those learnings outside and into the field.

“We got really good at understanding how to take an algorithmic approach to yield. It’s about understanding the yield equation, breaking it apart, optimizing individual aspects, and restacking them,” Storey says. “In row crops, the soil is the most important part, and to solve the yield equation we have know the variables that correlate and then begin to manage.”

What Does The System Look Like?

Currently, the beta version product is housed in a 3”x6” steel tube which can be mounted on any style of implement or equipment to automatically take measurements 4” to 6” deep every 50’.

(Soil Action)

“The real end goal is to have every equipment cab be mounted with an AI enabled agent to give you real-time measurements of what’s going on in your field,” Storey says. “It’s an AI agent focused on optimizing yield.”

The first testing was conducted in northern Iowa.

“We’re building our models on data collected from the field, and we’re using deep learning to ingest all of the information and help understand correlations,” Oslan says. “We can see everything that’s there, but we don’t understand everything that is there. That’s a focus for our work right now.”

“Holy Grail of Soil Sampling”

When it’s ready to be commercially available, Soil Action aims to provide results measuring two forms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Other crop nutrients will be added in the future.

“Every expert we talked to said we couldn’t use NIRS in soil sampling, but the physics said we could,” Oslan says. “We took two intensive weeks using sand and manipulating it for measurements with NIRS, and our deep learning models can untangle data in a way classical statistical methods cannot. Now, it’s about how fast we can solve for soil nutrients with these newer tools.”

Soil Action says it aims to provide the equipment to farmers for a hardware fee of $10,000 paired with a subscription for the analysis on an annual fee basis.

Yield Lab Institute's Incubator Program Reimagines AgTech Investment

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 18:20:29 GMT

With a new international reach and rooted in agriculture, the Yield Lab Institute is launching HARVEST AgTech (Harnessing Agricultural Research and Venture Ecosystems for Sustainable Technology.)

This program is building from the foundation of the previous Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator IN2 program, which since 2014 has supported 77 startups. Twenty-six of those companies have worked with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and went on to raise $290 million in funding, and five exited via acquisition or merger.

“IN2 is pleased to continue its commitment to agtech innovation by supporting this next chapter with YLI in St. Louis,” said Sarah Derdowski, IN2 program manager at NREL, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory, in the announcement. “We’re confident this step will empower YLI and its partners to expand investment in agtech, create more opportunities for innovators, and help build a more resilient, adaptable future.”

The mission of HARVEST going forward is “empowering the global agriculture startup community through research collaborations, field testing, and direct funding opportunities, promising innovations can reach the market faster.”

HARVEST AgTech will bring on two new technical partners: North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative and University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. Additionally, the incubator will have a partner network with 12 regional ecosystems across the U.S. and international reach in Argentina, Brazil, Israel and the United Kingdom.

“YLI is honored to have this unique opportunity to build on the incredible foundation of the IN2 agtech program and continue to invest in high-potential innovations through the newly established H.A.R.V.E.S.T. AgTech program,” said Stephanie Regagnon, executive director for the Yield Lab Institute, said in the announcement. “YLI will learn from IN2’s success and ensure the core elements of the proven model stay intact including an internationally recognized external advisory board, a robust process for selecting cohort companies, and an expansive network of partners to refer companies into the pipeline. YLI and our partners also plan to expand the program in very meaningful ways in year one.”

Additional partners supporting the program are Breakthrough Energy Discovery, NREL Foundation and the Missouri Technology Corporation.

Risk Management Tools for Ag Retailers: A Gap In the Industry

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 18:22:56 GMT

There’s risk in every link in the agricultural supply chain. But the team at Vane says there’s one link that needs risk management tools and they aim to serve –agribusiness.

“Agribusinesses have a lot of risk,” says Clayton Becker, chief operating officer at Vane, who recently appeared on The Scoop Podcast. “That’s really what Vane was founded to do. We recognize a gap in the market that exists for agribusinesses that provide products and services to farmers.”

Founded in 2020, Vane provides policy coverage for weather-based losses to the business.

“We provide coverage for agribusinesses that aren’t covered, like farmers are, through federal crop insurance. Every year, farmers face millions of dollars of affected losses from weather events, and the frequency and severity of those losses is getting more intense. Those losses can be catastrophic for those people that are affected. Fortunately, farmers have great insurance options to cover them, protect their revenue, provide some coverage for replant or prevented plant or loss of the crop if they lose it from hail or perils like that. But the agribusinesses that supply farmers have really never had good coverage options,” Becker says.

Becker cites his previous roles in the agriculture industry as providing examples of how such assurance with coverage would benefit the supply chain. In 2019, when he was a senior leader at Golden Harvest, there were 1 million acre of prevent plant in North Dakota, and that along with other experiences demonstrate the great losses that can be experienced due to weather.

With coverage options for seed companies, seed treatment companies, ag retailers, custom applicators and more, Vane uses proprietary models in how it places policies.

“We start by getting a feel of the products or the services they provide, what the location is, and then looking at the weather, the crop history data, and then we pull data from RMA over the past decade or two to look at the losses that have been reported through RMA, and then overlay that with weather history,” Becker says. “So we can really provide them coverage to offset that lost revenue that they face.”

When working with clients, particularly, ag retail, they like to start with the question: what keeps them up at night?

“Where do they have significant impacts on their balance sheet due to lost services due to weather events. And we can take that and customize a policy,” Becker says.

He highlights how as retailers are planning for 2026, such coverage provided by a policy can be used to support programs the retailer offers.

“It can be a part of their business planning process. To know that they’ve got this coverage available they can budget it into their cost and their exposure, and then really think about how they market their services and their products to be as competitive as they can be in the marketplace,” he says.

Farming Doesn’t Follow All the Business Models, Unique Opportunity for Startups

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 17:26:51 GMT

It could be said success in business is driven by timing and people. And AgLaunch provides agricultural startups with the nexus of both.

With its AgLaunch365 accelerator, early-stage startups have programming paired with the coast to coast network of AgLaunch farmers.

It’s a story Michael Rhys and the team at Barnwell Bio experienced firsthand. Their company spun out of the same technology platform used for municipal waste monitoring during COVID-19, except they are applying it to biosecurity and animal welfare.

Rhys says there is no other program like AgLaunch in existence.

“The farmer buy-in was really important to us along with the product feedback and guidance farmers can give us on the feature roadmap we want to add to Barnwell,” he says. “What’s great about the AgLaunch network is the level of inclusion along the way and the how the farmer network shares their feedback in real time and we’re able to iterate with them quickly because of their candid insights.”

Barnwell Bio collects aggregate samples from animal byproducts, analyzes them for a broad array of pathogens and then shares the assessment of potential health risks with farmers and their veterinarians.

“We see an opportunity to change the sentiment in animal health from being reactive to proactive,” Rhys says.

Michael Rhys, CEO, Barnwell Bio

(Ashley Benham)

Two-Way Street

Just as the startups receive benefits from the AgLaunch programming, as do the farmers. Fundamental to its approach it getting startups on farms in field trials, the farmers who take part in those field trials can earn an equity stake in the companies.

One of the original farmer members to the AgLaunch network is Grant Norwood, a Tennessee row crop farmer. He was part of the farmer network who proved the concept of Aglaunch earlier this year and cashed out an early investment in an irrigation technology startup.

“Farming is a business that doesn’t follow all the business models,” Norwood says. “And if you are coming from non-ag background, the farmer is your insight early on to how to best finish development and finish designing the product. We share knowledge to how ag markets work and to purchasing models. For a startup company it can be a big jump ahead to have that insight that would otherwise take them several years on their own.

Norwood has done field trials with sensors, hardware, and biological startups. And he’s proud to be part of the network he says is “where inventors meet farmers to solve agriculture’s problems.”

While the group started in Tennessee, it has since expanded into the midwest and pacific northwest.

“We’re a diverse group growing a lot of different crops and raising a lot of different livestock. But we are like-minded in helping startup companies bring their ideas to agriculture,” Norwood says.

AgLaunch has officially opened applications for the 2026 AgLaunch365 Accelerator. Applications are due by September 15, 2025.

AgLaunch365 aims to provide the proving ground startups need to help reshape how food is grown, animal are raises and land is stewarded.

For founders who would like to learn more, AgLaunch is hosting short Q&A webinars:

• August 4, 1-2pm CT: Registration link.

• August 14, 12-1pm CT: Registration link.

• August 25, 12-1pm CT: Registration link.

Inside the Pivot: Farmers Edge CEO on Reinventing for the Enterprise Era

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 14:11:38 GMT

What drew you to the company and to the role?

Agriculture is my fourth industry. Before this, I spent a decade at Amazon on the retail side of the business. When this opportunity with Farmers Edge was presented to me, I started researching the industry more deeply. Peeling back the layers and looking at the role of technology over the years—and the reputational challenges AgTech has faced—I saw an opportunity to apply my background in tech and operations to build solid technology solutions and help push the digitization of agriculture forward.

What changes did you aim to bring to the company?

My mandate was to assess the entire business model. A lot of ag technology solutions, including ours at Farmers Edge, were compelling—but adoption wasn’t where it should be. Our previous approach was very product-centric: launch a solution, and assume the customer would adopt it. But every grower is different, and a one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work.

So, the questions I focused on understanding were: Why is there a gap? And how can we create more value?

Your new product is Managed Services. Tell us what it offers.

With our enterprise business, we are completely customer centric. We start by understanding the customer’s business: what are they trying to do, and how can we help?

For example, if you’re a CTO at a large agribusiness, we bring both agronomic expertise and technical capability under one roof. That allows us to build custom solutions for operations, supply chain, and reporting. If your business is scaling from 1 million to 200 million acres, we can support that growth so your team can stay focused on the core business. In short, our Managed Services solution is designed to scale with customers.

We launched this under a year ago and the traction that we’ve received from these large agribusinesses has been significant. We are trying to address an unmet need in the marketplace for these large agribusinesses and take away the burden from these CTOs and CIOs who want to digitize, but don’t have a reliable partner to do it with.

What’s changed about Farmers Edge in the past three years?

The name “Farmers Edge” reflects our original focus: building tools for individual growers. Now, our model is focused on helping large enterprises—retailers, insurers, and input companies—depending on where they are on the tech adoption curve.

We can build new technology for them, improve what they already have, or white label our own. That flexibility helps them go to market faster with fewer resource demands.

We think of ourselves as an extension of their technology team—only more agile.

What percent of your business is focused on Managed Services today?

Roughly 80% of our team is focused on Managed Services, because that’s now our lead offering. We still have a base of growers across North America and Brazil using our variable rate solutions, and we continue to serve them. We also operate two soil testing labs that support both growers and enterprise clients.

What would you say are the most significant milestones for your team so far?

A key milestone was when we were able to define the problem, articulate it in a way that was simple for agribusinesses to understand, and then execute it with urgency and discipline in a way that we were also able to hold to our commitment. The last thing we wanted was to have an expectation mismatch with the ag tech and leave the business with a painful experience.

What’s an example of a recent project?

We support a variety of segments across agriculture—including insurance, ag retail, sustainability, and farm productivity—and each partnership looks a little different depending on the need.

One example is our work with the National Sorghum Producers, where we’re providing carbon intensity scoring for 1,700 fields and digitizing over 400 farms. It was a near turn-key solution that helped them meet evolving sustainability and compliance requirements without having to stand up internal infrastructure.

We’re also working with insurance providers in both Canada and Brazil to modernize risk management systems and enhance data-driven decision-making.

In ag retail, we build white-label technology platforms and agronomic tools that can scale with our partners—whether they’re launching digital agronomy services, expanding e-commerce, or centralizing data from across their network. Across every segment, the value is the same: taking the complexity off their plate so they can stay focused on what they do best.

You’ve shifted from public to private. What’s the story there?

We’re now backed by Fairfax Financial, a long-term investor based in Toronto. They’ve been around for four decades, have a strong track record of value investing and have outperformed the market with a compounded return of over 18% annually.
We’re well-capitalized and financially supported by Fairfax.

Like many in the technology sector, we experienced post-IPO correction. Going private allowed us to focus on successfully executing the pivot. Like I mentioned earlier, our Managed Services offering has been extremely well received by the industry.

Where do you hope to be five years from now?

In five years, I want Farmers Edge to be seen as the gold standard for digital transformation in agriculture. Not just as a service provider, but as a strategic partner that enables the world’s largest agribusinesses to scale, adapt, and lead.

We’re building a category-defining company – one that makes technology a competitive advantage, not a barrier, for the entire industry.

Biodiversity Index in the Field: A Look at Diagnostic Microbiome Tests for Soil Health

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 21:04:11 GMT

In the past few years, about a handful of companies have emerged with tests to measure a soil microbiome of fields, give a biodiversity index and help farmers understand the effects of inputs on soil health.

All of these companies recognize the complexity of a soil’s biology, and they aim to bring new tools to advance regenerative agriculture. Different from chemical and physical soil tests, which are often used to gauge what the soil needs (for example, rates of nitrogen), microbiome tests can provide insights on what the soil can supply (for example, nitrogen fixation or decomposition processes).

And these companies see the microbiome soil tests as complements — not replacements — to traditional soil testing.

Biome Makers

With a goal of delivering agronomic insights, Biome Makers built its BeCrop technology pairing soil microbiome knowledge and machine learning. The company, which is based in northern California, currently services farmers across 2.2 million acres and six continents. The BeCrop Test provides a report on nutrient cycling, health and biodiversity to be used to improve yields, monitor nutrient cycling, and predict disease risks. ( biomemakers.com )

EarthOptics

Launched as Pattern Ag and now part of EarthOptics, this platform claims to provide farmers a predication of key field agronomic outcomes with more than 90% confidence. The company uses DNA sequencing to provide soil biological test results. It also offers a premium program combing the soil microbiome results, with sensor data, yield data and satellite imagery for soil fertility and crop planning. ( earthoptics.com )

RhizeBio

Based in North Carolina, RhizeBio says its test uses a proprietary bioinformatics pipeline to translate raw soil DNA sequencing data into soil health reports both informative and easy to use. The results can be bucketed into three groups: biodiversity, bioindicators and risk analysis. The RhizeBio report provides biodiversity data including the number of species within the soil’s microbiome, community evenness, primary members and functionality. This gives insights on a soil’s capacity in stress environments such as droughts, disease, disturbance rating and nutrient cycling potential. ( rhizebio.com )

Trace Genomics

Recently acquired by Canada-based Miraterra, Trace Genomics was founded in northern California and has a soil analytical lab in Ames, Iowa. The Trace Genomics testing uses DNA sequencing to provide insights on the soil microbiome. The technology combines soil science, genomics and machine learning to output a measurement of a soil’s bacteria and fungi. Combining those measurements with chemical properties, growers receive information on a soil’s health and productivity. The company also offers a year-round sampling program to help guide seed selection, input selections, fertility products and biologicals for 70 crops and more than 225 pathogens. ( miraterrasoil.com/trace )

Flying High and Digging Deep — Precision Ag from the Sky to the Soil

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:40:27 GMT

Josiah Garber found tar spot lurking in one of his cornfields the last week of June. The southeast Pennsylvania corn grower says that was a first for his farm.

“I’d never found it in July before, much less the end of June. I think the pressure this year is going to be intense with all the moisture around,” predicts Garber, who’s based in Lancaster County, Pa.

Tar spot commonly overwinters as spores in plant residue. During the subsequent growing season, rain and high humidity can promote spores which can be splashed onto corn plants and then develop into what is often called homegrown tar spot.

Tar spot spores can also become air-borne in a field and blow into new fields.

How significant tar spot infections become in any given season depends on the disease triangle – the interplay between a susceptible host, a pathogen and the environment.

A Two-Pass Program Is In Place

Garber’s plan to address tar spot – along with any other disease pressure that’s present – is to make two fungicide applications 21 days apart. This year, the first one went on the crop with a ground rig just before tassel and the second application will be made right after tassel, which was underway last week.

“This is the first time we went with a fungicide application this early, but I’m glad we did since we found the tar spot,” Garber says.

For the past five-plus years, he has been investing in two fungicide applications annually, with both made post-tassel.

“We found that that pays, and once we saw that it would pay, it just became part of our program,” Garber told David Hula and Randy Dowdy during their latest Breaking Barriers with R&D podcast, available now on Farm Journal TV. This episode offers farmers some serious actionable insights to help improve ROI.

To achieve good coverage with the ground rig, Garber says he applies a fungicide/water tank mix at 20 to 25 gallons per acre.

“We’ve been working really hard on our applications, trying to cover below the ear leaf to get optimum performance,” he says. “That’s our goal.”

Droplet Size Impacts Coverage And Efficacy

The goal of getting fungicide placed in the crop where plants can readily use it is what Matt Crabbe shoots to achieve with aerial applications. He typically uses 2 gallons of water per acre as the carrier, depending on the products being sprayed.

“I hear a lot of times people talking water, water, water, but a lot of water can go to the ground and take the product with it if you’re not careful,” cautions Crabbe, owner of Crabbe Aviation, with locations in North Carolina and Virginia.

“Because you’ve got bigger droplets with the plane, you’re putting out a little more volume, and it’s not going to necessarily stay with the plant like I found it does with the lower volumes,” he tells Dowdy and Hula.

To help ensure product stays on plant leaves, Crabbe usually applies products like foliar fungicides at 3’ to 8’ above the crop canopy, maintaining a consistent speed of between 150 and 160 miles per hour.

“I try to keep the application in that range, because our test results show that sets up the droplets at the right size for optimum coverage,” he says.

Get As-Applied Maps For Your Records

Dowdy asked Crabbe whether he provides customers with as-applied maps for their reference and records, post product applications.

“You know, there’s a lot of people that want to overlay yield maps, and then some people just want to trust but verify the good old Ronald Reagan way,” Dowdy says.

Crabbe says modern technology is making as-applied maps easier to provide to growers than in previous years.

“If you place an order on my website, I can press ‘done’ when I finish spraying a field and the system will give you a look at the as-applied map,” he explains.

Crabbe recommends farmers ask their aerial applicator directly about their mapping system as many now have digital platforms where you can get a password to access your specific maps and view application details immediately after completion.

Hear more about getting the biggest bang out of your fungicide buck from Dowdy and Hula on YouTube at Breaking Barriers With R&D: Flying High and Digging Deep — Precision Ag from the Sky to the Soil and on AgriTalk, with Host Chip Flory:

Your next read: Is 600-Bu.-Per-Acre Corn in the Cards This Year for David Hula, the Reigning World Record Holder?

The Scoop Podcast: Growmark Launches New Campaign for FS Brand

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 19:36:27 GMT

Heather Thompson, Executive Director of enterprise marketing at Growmark, shares the details behind the new campaign for the FS brand—Start to Finish.

“FS is the flagship brand that farmers have a close relationship with and a rich experience with,” says Thompson. “We want to invest in the FS brand and help to build awareness of what a farmer can expect when they’re doing business with FS and the benefits of working with their local FS cooperative.”

Growmark is the wholesale agricultural supply cooperative with more than 40 FS branded retail companies from South Dakota to the east coast and Ontario, Canada.

The tagline, “Start to Finish” highlights the opportunities in every season all season long for products and services offered by FS retail locations.

“We think ‘Start to Finish’ really embodies who FS is as a retail cooperative. Farmers can count on FS to provide all of the products they need from seed to fertilizer, to fuel to the lubricants for their tractors. So truly, from start to finish, FS has it all,” Thompson says.
The advertising campaign starts July 1. It’s the first brand campaign promoting FS in 10 years.

“So much has changed in the industry in that 10 years,” Thompson says. “It felt really important that we could talk to growers about what they can expect from FS, the benefit of working with their local cooperative, and also that trusted relationship that they’ve always known us for.”

One of the biggest trends in that time has also been in the increase in technology in the industry, used by the cooperative, and used by the farmers themselves. Thompson points to the propriety mobile app used by FS, myFS Agonomy, which gives in-season agronomic insights at the field level.

“We hope to start seeing an easier opportunity to have conversations about the whole package that FS brings to growers,” she says. “And we hope that it’s a great opportunity to start connecting the dots even within the co-op to those customers, to make sure that we’re truly delivering on that start to finish.”

New Chassis For Application: Terrana Biosciences Emerges From Stealth Mode

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:40:00 GMT

The saying in real estate is location, location, location. And that applies for technology being unveiling by Terrana Biosciences.

Emerging from stealth mode after four years of development, this Flagship Pioneering company is taking the RNA expertise of cousin company Moderna, and creating crop protection solutions in parallel but distinctly different than cousin company Indigo Ag.

“Terrana is coming out of the Flagship Pioneering ecosystem in Boston, and Flagship has a long history of working on RNA,” Ryan Rapp Terrana Biosciences co-founder and CEO. “Probably the best known RNA company is Moderna, but we have a whole host of other ones within the ecosystem, and it’s helped allow us to have all this knowledge about RNA, but apply it to solve problems in agriculture.”

Rapp says RNA is a natural solution to deliver proteins and RNA molecules that can solve many agronomic issues.

“Plants have natural RNAs inside of them that have been evolving with plants for thousands of years. They’ve been largely ignored, because when people are thinking about RNA in plants, they’re usually trying to find things that are making plants sick,” he says. “What Terrana does is we actually look at all the things that everyone else has not had the time to look at and we begin working with those and what we’ve developed from that is a class of three products: prevent, protect and improve.”

Still in pre-commercial phase, Terrana is working on its portfolio of biological RNA-based products that can work like a chassis to carry and deliver protein building information directly to the plant. Protective effects provided by such technologies include anti-insect, nematicidal, antibacterial, and one key solution Terrana is focused on is antivirals.
“We’re looking at some of the vegetable species where today there are severe problems with viruses in the in glass houses and protected culture, particularly like tomatoes,” Rapp says. “We’re working to create viral products that can deliver resistance to several different viruses that when you get them, you kind of have to destroy the whole crop in the greenhouse.”

(Terrana Biosciences)

While the company’s first development focus is specialty crops, Rapp is eyeing opportunities in row crops as well.

“Think about Asian soybean rust in Brazil. You’ve got farmers that are growing three crops of soybean a year down there and spraying up to 16 times. We believe with the way that our technology works we could potentially reduce that to one spray per cropping cycle. So it’s basically three sprays per year,” he says.

New solutions to previously uncontrolled pests, improved application efficicacy and climate resilience are all benefits Rapp says are possible.

He points to cherry orchards in the Pacific Northwest requiring chill hours–hours below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. And farmers have observed warmer winters, which leads to poor flowering, poor fruit set and poor quality fruit.

“Farmers don’t have good options today—they could cut down the cherry trees, move north to Canada, or replace trees with new genetics,” he says. “Terrana’s product lets us do something completely different. We could go in during the summer, spray those trees with our RNA based product, and actually attenuate or turn down the amount of cold hours that they need so that they can go back to being productive farms that are setting high quality fruit. This keeps those flavor profiles, keeps the cherries that consumers have come to love, and gives the economics back to the farmer.”

Terrana is aiming to have commercially available products in the next few years, pending regulatory approval, that can be applied as sprayables or seed treatments. And the company says its RNA-based biologicals can be stored at ambient temperature and will be formulated as stand alone applications or for tank mixes.

Meet Buddy: Bushel Announces AI Assistant within Its CRM

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:45:03 GMT

Bushel has created its own chat bot using large language models and APIs to its platform data including CRM data, interactions, calls, and transactional data from the ERP.

As explained by the Bushel team, they have married the data used on its platform with the power of AI to bring actionable insights.

For example, prompts to Buddy could include:

“Who hasn’t contracted grain in the last six months?”
“How many customers haven’t been called in the past 30 days?”

Bushel says this new functionality can simplify workflows by eliminating the need to run additional reports or use multiple systems to get this information.

“Buddy makes it easier for agribusinesses to know where to focus and how to move faster,” said Jake Joraanstad, CEO of Bushel. “We’re working to streamline the entire customer workflow—helping teams go from identifying opportunities in the CRM to completing payments seamlessly. Adding card acceptance and delivering new capabilities like contract management are part of that effort to make digital tools more useful across the business.”

This tool was announced at the company’s Buddy Seat conference, which took place last week. Other news from the event includes:

An expansion to payment options via Bushel so now agribusinesses can now accept debit and credit card payments for grower invoices and balances due.
Quotes in the Customer Portal is now live for ag retail customers

Heads Up: Space Weather Could Disrupt GPS Signal This Week

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 17:01:55 GMT

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration has updated its expected arrival of a G4 severe geomagnetic storm. Initially expected to be observed June 2 to June 3, it’s now potentially ending earlier by June 2.

These space weather events can disturb the Earth’s magnetic field and at this severe level cause “more frequent and longer periods of GPS degradation.”

“If you’re finished planting, have no spraying to do, or otherwise too wet to get into the field, this solar storm may not matter for production agriculture even for the most susceptible states,” says Terry Griffin with Kansas State University. “Given the time of year, several hundred thousand acres of peanuts are left to be planted in Georgia (74% planting progress as of last week). Without RTK (not just GPS but sub-inch accuracy RTK), a 11% yield penalty is known at planting due to uncertainty of AB line when digging, the topic of my current research. In Kansas, corn was 85% planted as of last week and most crops have been planted on schedule or ahead of the 5-year average, but spraying and other midseason operations are still vulnerable.”

He adds Kansas winter wheat harvest usually begins mid-June so it won’t be affected by this storm.

Are these events normal?

Griffin says accurately predicting solar storms is more difficult than terrestrial weather.
“One analogy is to think of predicting geomagnetic disturbances on Earth as compared to the familiar tornado season. We know that in Kansas every April and May we can expect tornadoes in our area; when we may have a tornado watch, sometimes a tornado warning, and less common for an individual homeowner to be directly affected by a tornado,” he says. “Geomagnetic disturbances are similar: every 11 years we should expect a variety of “watches” and “alerts” due to increased solar activity before quieting down for about the next seven years until activity ramps up again.”

However space weather brings an even greater level of uncertainty for what the precise impacts on Earth will be. Just because there’s activity measured from the sun, it doesn’t always arrive at Earth in a predictable pattern.

“Activity on the sun does not always arrive at the Earth, observed coronal mass ejections (CME) can go in the opposite direction or even be a “near miss”, just like a tornado,” he says. “Instruments can detect CMEs several minutes after they occur, and even when material is coming toward the Earth it may take a few days before we know if we’re being affected.”

What can farmers do?

“GNSS outages caused by solar storms should be expected to be the norm, at least during solar sunspot number maximums that occur about every 11 years,” Griffin says. “At the very least, farmers should expect GNSS outages associated with solar storms during sunspot maximum; spanning maybe three years of the 11 year cycle.”

Griffin says solar storms can occur any time of year, and he points to some historical evidence suggesting increased frequency of geomagnetic disturbances near the spring and fall equinoxes.

Farm Journal reached out to Griffin first thing Monday morning for an update. He said the solar storm “arrived a day early...it was moving really fast” and would likely be over by Monday afternoon. He did not hear from any farmers about GPS outages or issues with satellite lock on their farm equipment as of Monday morning.

NOAA did record a G4 level solar event in space occurring on Sunday, June 1, however, by Monday morning at 8:45 am EST it had weakened to a G1.

Griffin says farmers should check the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center hompage (www.swpc.noaa.gov) on a regular basis this summer before heading out to spray or do other field work.

“That May 10th event (last year) was not a once in a lifetime event,” Griffin warns. “We need to keep our eyes open for the next one.”

The “next one” could happen anytime in the next 12 months, or not at all, he believes. Griffin says we’re in the middle of what some scientists call the “battle zone” of solar activity and the current conditions are expected to last for the next year. Once we get to next summer, Griffin says, scientists are projecting a “quiet period” for the next six or seven years before space weather and solar storms start to ramp back up in the early 2030s.

“The previous solar cycle we were in was really quiet, and the one we’re in right now is normal,” he says. “We need to be ready for these events.”

Demonstrating Value Is a Mandate: Fun, Shiny Objects Don’t Do the Job

Mon, 19 May 2025 13:41:07 GMT

Benny Andres, who oversees the product management team at Bushel, shares how technology—and specifically software—can be used to strengthen the relationship between farmers and their trusted advisers.

Specifically, he says agribusinesses are looking for three things in technology:

Automation
Workflow improvement
Fewer systems to work in

“We’re not here to take away that relationship the agribusiness has to have with their farmers. We think of it more as strengthening that relationship. And so how can our digital tools help these agribusinesses do better business,” Andres says.

He says the Bushel team is applying a focus on how to do business better, and when value is demonstrated in the technology adoption, farmers the first in line to be adopters.

“There’s a little bit slower curve for ag on technology adoption. People are a little hesitant to change. But if you can show them the value and prove the value, they’re very willing to make the change. With the right push and the right value, people are willing to take on change,” he says.

“There’s a lot of new offerings out there in the marketplace. There’s a lot of fun, shiny new things. But if you can’t really explain or convey what that value is to, whether it be a transaction or a workflow improvement, or an engagement between agribusiness and farmer, that’s where you have the hard time of getting people to take on technology.”

Is ‘farming without farmers’ the future of ag?

Fri, 16 May 2025 03:55:40 GMT

The rapid evolution of technology, robotics and artificial intelligence has brought continuous and dramatic change to every industry — including, and perhaps particularly, agriculture. To discuss the growing role of AI across agriculture and the fresh produce industry, The Packer sat down with Rizwan Butt, vice president of product management for iTradeNetwork, in a fireside chat webinar on May 14.

“Imagine a future where we are literally farming without farmers,” Butt said. “And that may sound scary and anxiety-inducing for a lot of people, but … the question we have to ask ourselves is: Are we of those who are going to embrace these realities and adjust and adapt to them, or are we going to be apprehensive about them and try to avoid them for as long as possible?”

Agriculture is already employing robotics to aid in everything from planting to crop protection to harvesting to selecting for quality and much more, Butt said.

“This is not some scientific sci-fi future. This is a reality today that’s being done either in labs or in experiments or actually being deployed in the real world,” he said. “So, there is going to be a point in time where we have to accept the fact that there are going to be machines and AI tools that are going to augment what we do as human beings and make that job much more productive, much safer and much more optimized.”

As demands on the global food supply are expected to increase by 40% to 70%, while at the same time the labor pool continues to shrink, the need for AI in agriculture is real and the time is now.

For more on how AI is helping agricultural supply chains evolve from reactive to predictive as well as how retailers and growers can now anticipate disruptions — whether from weather, demand shifts or logistics breakdowns — and adapt proactively, watch the webinar now.

Watch on demand: Register here to download and watch the webinar

Meet the Power Players: What Drives the Largest Farm Customer Group

Fri, 02 May 2025 16:10:51 GMT

The team at Stratus Ag Research divided farmers into three groups based on how they interact with their ag retailer:

Cost-conscious self-sufficient: 37%
Traditional retailer reliant: 23%
Data-driven solutions seeker: 40%

The 40% of the pie chart—the data-driven solutions seeker—stands separate from the other two groups, which are a bit more alike.

And Mike Weddel of Stratus says there are 5 key things retailers should know about this important segment:

They want more services from their retailer.
They want a retailer who can provide tech technology support.
They’re less concerned about getting the lowest price
They’re out looking for information from a broader range of sources, and they’re less likely to rely just on their own experience.
They get more value from online customer portals. And they would view retail support on field data management software to be more useful.

Weddel says this group is particularly important to retailers who pride themselves on high level of service.

“Particular to the data-driven solutions seeker, the farmers in that group find a whole range of services more useful or important to them than the other farmer groups we’ve identified,” he says.

Examples include:

Data comparing product performance across multiple brands
Advice on products to prevent resistance
Field scouting to identify problems and product selection for spray application
Field-level record keeping
Grower information meetings or training sessions

Regarding technology, the data-driven solutions seeker, wants a retailer who is on the leading edge of technology including precision ag along with assistance on interpretation of field-level data.

While the other two farming segments may be more transactional in nature in their business relationship, this 40% of the market—the data-driven solutions seeker—is looking for extra boots on the ground and expertise in areas where they otherwise don’t have.

“This key group does depend on what may be considered more traditional services of ag retail. They want advice and recommendations. The want to deal with people they know. And they want reliable custom application,” Weddel says.

You can download the Status Ag Report on this customer segment here.

The One Tool That Adds $37 Billion in Yield to Five Crops

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:59:23 GMT

Citing a study by Texas A&M, Andrew Moore, president of the National Ag Aviation Association says the industry adds $37 billion in yield to the five main row crops.
This is just one example of the role ag aviation plays across all of agriculture.

As Moore explains, it’s a 104-year-old industry, with many multi-generation operations and pilot families. In the U.S., there are more than 1,500 aerial application businesses.

“It’s a very progressive industry, and it’s a very mature industry,” Moore says.

On average, ag aviation makes at least one application to around 127 million crop acres, or one-third of the cropland in the U.S.

“In addition, the industry treats 7.9 million acres of pasture and rangeland, 5.1 million acres of forestry, 5 million acres of mosquito habitat, and that doesn’t include the work fighting forest fires,” Moore says.

Trends in ag aviation include larger aircraft, precision technologies, new applications (such as cover crop seeding) and uncrewed (drone) aircraft.

Right now, the largest ag aircraft is an Air Tractor 802 with 800 gal. capacity, but the company has announced the development of a new model 1002 with 1,000 gal. capacity.

“Five percent of the those with a crewed operation are also in uncrewed/UAS drones,” Moore says. “Another 11% are considering it.”

According to the American Spray Drone Coalition, about 10.3 million acres are sprayed by uncrewed aircraft every year.

Challenges In The Industry
Moore highlights two current challenges NAAA is closely watching.

He says the main purpose of the association is to work toward product registrations for aerial application.

“It’s important we can provide data for those regulatory processes to get more accurate information on the exposure and application of those pesticides via aerial application,” Moore says.

As examples, he points to how they can help mitigate off-target drift and use data to show what buffers may need to be.

A second concern is the current uncertainty around trade and tariffs.

The largest ag aircraft manufacturer, Air Tractor, is located in Texas while Thrush, another large volume manufacturer, is located in Georgia. But raw materials, engines and parts are sourced globally.

“The majority of our engines today are turbine engines — it’s about 85% of the industry. The most popular engine make is manufactured by Pratt & Whitney in Canada.” Moore says. “You could see an increase in the price of an engine of 25%, which is significant.”

What You Should Know About Ag Pilots
“If you want the job done quickly and effectively to maximize yields, aerial application is the great way to go,” Moore says.

You can find an aerial applicator here: https://www.agaviation.org/

Moore says NAAA members provide professional service, stay up-to-date with safety, regularly calibrate their equipment and adopt new technologies for enhanced performance.

Peel Back The Curtain: Boosting Farm Efficiency With Business Tech

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 20:05:49 GMT

While relationships remain the foundation of the farmer business ecosystem, technology is brining a new structure to how everyday business is done.

“You have to have the relationship, maybe to start, but if it is inconvenient, you will lose business,” says Jake Jorandstaad co-founder of Bushel. “If you still only send paper invoices in the mail, and you don’t accept an online payment, you’re in trouble. You’re literally making it inconvenient for the 35-year-old who’s about to be your biggest customer in the next ten years to do business with you.”

Joranstaad highlights this as a takeaway from the latest State of Farm Report published by Bushel. Started in 2018, the goal of the survey is to answer questions about farmer tech adoption, which provides takeaways not only for technology but also payments and business operations.

This year’s findings are from over 1,300 respondents, and of which 59% of respondents farm more than 500 acres.

To support the importance of ease of doing business, the study found more are shifting to digital options. Only 39% of farmers prefer submitting grain offers in person, and 34% prefer ordering inputs face-to-face.

“Five years ago it was like most farmers didn’t really use software in the farm in their mind,” he says. Now, per Bushel’s survey, on average a farmer uses three software programs in their farm business.

In each year, the younger demographic shows a stronger use of technology in general. Joranstaad says with successful adoption over time, the demographics are shifting.

“50 is the new 40. 50 is the age range that tips the scale. If you’re 50 or younger, you are very much interested in adoption of technology on your operation. There’s very little resistance anymore in that range. And of course, more and more of those folks are also running the operations,” he says.

This underscores the need for businesses who serve farmers to outfit their operations for the future.

For example, 61% of farmers under 40 prefer mobile apps for payments and fund transfers.

And record-keeping has seen a jump in digitization: in two years, the use of pen and paper dropped from 65% to 21%. From the 2025 survey, spreadsheets are used by 39% of respondents—in 2024 it was 61%.

(Bushel)

One of the next leap frog’s in tech use will be software and apps for decision making beyond just simple record keeping.

Per this report, farmers under the age of 50 value software to help with improved decision making at a higher rate. And with the data spliced by size of operation, one-third of farms more than 10,000 acres use software for improved decision making.

The trends in the State of the Farm Report have been used by Bushel with production introductions, such as Bushel Wallet.

“We expected the farmer to want to start doing business with their farm operation, like they can at home,” Joranstaad says, referring to Venmo and Paypal services. “Now our report shows the 40 year olds and under expect to be able to use technology and tools to do payments and handle their business. Even though 80% of people get paper checks, but the preference to get paper checks is less than half. And so we’ve got to work on that as an industry.”

He says in the past 18 months, Bushel has seen a growth in farmers enrolling for direct deposit online. Earlier this year, the company added a feature to Bushel Wallet where the online account can earn interest—right now around 3%.

“It’s been one of the things we were working on–how can we make a compelling place for your money to initially get it quickly so you can manage it, move it to your different banks, and now earn almost 3.5% interest,” Joranstaad says.

Other takeaways:

Farmer payments: Among farmers under 50, a 30% gap exists between how they are paid and how they prefer to be paid when it comes to paper checks.
Purchasing trends: 70% of farmers cite using a credit card at least one time per month; yet only 8% of farmers prefer the use of a credit card. 49% of respondents said that their ag retailers had some sort of policy regarding using credit cards. 40% of respondents say retailers are passing those fees onto the farmers to help recoup those costs.
Financial management: 32% are currently using apps or digital tools from their bank for financial management for their farm.
Digital payments: Up to 53% of respondents use Venmo and up to 46% use PayPal, which provide baseline experiences with digital payment processors for sending or receiving money.
Ordering inputs: 34% of respondents think the process of ordering inputs via their ag retailer could be improved—with the top examples being price information, easier access to quotes, and input comparison tools.

Unlock Profits: 5 Essential Questions for Early Soybean Planting

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:43:58 GMT

In the rush to get early soybeans planted, here are five questions to ask yourself prior to putting seed in the ground:

1. Are you using seed treatments to protect the crop?
Early-planted soybeans often stay in the ground up to 25 days, which makes them more vulnerable to disease and insect pressure. Seed treatments can mitigate a lot of risk.

“Today we have fungicides and insecticides to protect those beans at planting, which we didn’t have 10 years ago,” says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, based in central Illinois.

Pest pressure is typically higher early in the growing season as soil and air temperatures warm, triggering life cycles for not only freshly planted soybean seeds, but also pathogens, insects, and nematodes that feed on newly germinated seedlings, adds Jacquie Holland, an economist with the American Soybean Association (ASA).

Holland reports that a 2024 ASA/United Soybean Board survey done with 491 growers indicates 90% of U.S. soybean acres are planted with treated seeds. Only 3% of respondents had never planted any treated soybean seeds.

Fungicides and insecticides are the most widely used seed treatments with 72% and 66%, respectively, of farmers surveyed by ASA indicating these products are applied before planting.

2. Are you a one planter operation?
That will determine whether you have the capacity or equipment to plant soybeans and corn at the same time, if soil and weather conditions permit planting both.

You want to be able to plant corn when conditions are right. Never delay corn planting.

“Once conditions are ideal, you must plant corn,” Ferrie says. “If you miss the sweet spot, you could lose a ½ bu. to 1 bu. of corn per acre for each day’s delay.”

There are various solutions to potential planting bottlenecks. For instance, you can plant soybeans, switch to corn when conditions are right and then finish soybeans whenever you can.

“That mitigates risk by spreading out soybean maturity,” Ferrie says.

Learn more about how to address labor and equipment needs at Eight Steps to Early Soybean Planting

3. Have you considered soybean variety planting order?
Ferrie recommends going with your fullest season beans first and saving shorter season beans for planting later. It sounds counterintuitive, but there are good reasons for that advice.

“Based on our observations, we must plant full-season soybeans early enough to reach at least the three-trifoliate stage before the pre-solstice nights get too short,” Ferrie says. “There’s more time to get your short-season varieties planted early because they need fewer hours of darkness to trigger flowering.”

If early planted soybeans don’t get big enough to start flowering before the solstice, they will produce tall plants and that’s not necessarily a positive.

“The plants will continue to grow, adding vegetative stages until they reach R5 because flowering will be delayed until the nights get long enough after the solstice to trigger the reproductive stage. Tall plants don’t correlate with a yield increase. In two decades of studies, we have seen shoulder-high soybean plants lodge more often and yield less than waist-high plants,” Ferrie says.

4. Is your weed-control program in order?
“With early planting, the time frame for applying burndown, preplant and pre-emergence soybean herbicides is likely to coincide with corn planting,” says Ferrie.

“If your custom applicator is applying preplant and pre-emergence herbicides on corn, he might not want to stop, clean out a sprayer and apply soybean herbicides. I’ve seen soybean planting delayed three weeks while growers waited for a burndown herbicide application,” he adds.

Along with that, you also might need to consider a different option, such as using a pre-emergence soil-applied herbicide with residual control, Ferrie says, as a for instance.

“Follow that with a post-emergence application, applied a little earlier than you are used to. You might need to include a residual herbicide in the post-emergence treatment.”

5. Are you prepared to give soybeans a helping hand?
As soybeans try to emerge they may need some help if the surface crust is hard, meaning you might need to run a rotary hoe. If your hoe has been sitting in a shed forever, now’s the time to get it ready.

“We always say ‘hoe before you know,’” Ferrie says. “When you know you’re already in trouble with the crust, that’s when it’s usually getting too late to get the full benefit out of a rotary hoe. With these prices, you need to play every card you’ve got to add yield,” he says.

The same “hoe before you know” principle applies equally well to corn crops. You can learn more about the process from Ferrie’s video on YouTube Hoe Before You Know

Ag Retail Fintech Company Conduit Names New CEO

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 14:19:00 GMT

On the heels of Matt Carstens’ departure from Landus , Conduit Ag has also announced he’s no longer with the fintech company. Landus owns a majority of the stake in Conduit, which since it’s founding was led by CEO Carstens.

Interim CEO for Conduit Ag is Jack Brodshaug, who most recently was executive vice president of sales and marketing for Conduit.

The company’s announcement says of the appointment: “His leadership, combined with his extensive experience in technology development and go-to-market strategy, makes him well-suited to lead Conduit through this transition. Conduit intends to introduce new products shortly including its manufacturers portal and tier 2 credit support.”

Earlier this year, Conduit pivoted its strategy from online input sales and a farmer-facing product to currently focus on providing ag retailers financial technology and business services.

From the company’s leadership announcement: “Conduit remains committed to delivering cutting-edge, tech-driven solutions for ag retailers, product companies and innovators in general. With strong leadership in place, the company is poised to continue advancing its mission and supporting its partners in the agriculture industry.”

In November, Conduit announced a series of hires , including Brodshaug’s. Two of those, Eric Snodgrass and Matt Reardon, have since departed the company.