Grower Chad Glover: ‘Farmers should be paid for use of their data’
In today’s rapidly evolving agricultural landscape, the potential for farmers to benefit from their own data has never been greater. With a plethora of data platforms and a continuous stream of revolutionary apps being launched, the promise of data-driven farming is tantalising. But do these data truly empower farmers, or are they becoming mere cogs in a data-driven machine? Future Farming set out to answer this question by speaking with crop growers from around the globe. In this first episode, we hear from Grower Chad Glover from South Australia.
“I use PCT Agcloud for all my mapping, and the Agfiniti app of Ag Leader, that brings my mapping into SMS Software. That’s probably the three main ones I use.”
“Capturing yield data, and analysing my fertiliser input, helps me to cut down on the areas that are not yielding, and will never yield, and put it into the areas that are yielding.”
“I have had a lot of country mapped across the farm as EM maps, NDVI maps and radiometric maps, and have potassium, thorium, and uranium maps. These show me what the soil types are, and I can work out what soil types are not performing. It gives me a better control of my inputs. I am targeting the areas which are yielding, and not the areas that are not.”
“It also helps me to improve the soil structure, bringing the pH in low pH country up by liming for example. That way I can improve the nutrient availability to the plants, which then hopefully gives me a yield benefit. I also use gypsum to improve soil structure in some areas.”
“I used to process the data myself. But now I actually pay somebody else to do it. People that are processing data all the time have a better understanding of what’s going on. And then I can sit down with my agronomist afterwards. I don’t have any big challenges currently.”
“The problem with farm data is that, once it is stuck on one platform, it is hard to get it into another platform. And another thing is that there are so many new platforms coming on the market. I expect 70% won’t be around in 5 years.”
“I like the ideas that some startups have, but a lot of them have not asked the farmers what they actually want. It would be good if there was more consultation before they put the app on the market. You can pay 300 dollars for an app, and then hear they have shut it down after twelve months. That’s why I stick to 3 bigger platforms, that have been around for years.”
“The use of data by third party organisations, when you pay so much for the data to be collected on the farm to be processed. To give you a figure: I have probably spent 100,000 dollars over the last 20 years collecting data on my farm, for processing, soil sampling, the lot. As a farmer you put all that data onto a platform, and they then can collect all the data and sell it to somebody else. There are really no restrictions on what companies can do with your data. It is big business. Data is worth money. Farmers should be paid for use of their data.”
“Managing variability across the paddock and the farm. That is what I am doing. Finding out what the abiotic stresses are across the paddock. What is influencing my yield? Is it disease or moisture stress? Is it a lack of micro nutrients, nitrogen or phosphorus? Using yield data, moisture data and protein data can help you with that.”
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