Retail Opportunities in the Precision Farming Landscape
Leading agricultural retailers are helping farmers reap significant benefits from new precision farming techniques, products, and services. They are partnering with farmers to demonstrate how the precise placement of the right inputs can optimize soil health on every field, with the end goal of increasing crop yields and farm profits.
While today’s retailers can provide farmers with an array of input options that enable on-farm precision, there is much confusion in the marketplace. From understanding the differences between precision inputs versus the traditional “broadcast” style to the influx of genetically engineered seeds and lesser-known biologicals, farmers may have concerns about the efficacy of new products compared to previous options.
Sustainable Biologicals Can Optimize Precision Input Strategies
Most input costs are outpacing inflation rates. Yet precision agriculture, led by biological inputs, is generating positive business results, from reducing costs to improving soil health to increasing crop yield. In fact, US wheat producers reported an increase in earnings of $46 per acre using new soil biologicals. While a Brazilian soy producer and president of the Associated Group for Sustainable Agriculture reduced pesticide costs by 40% using biologicals. For retailers, gaining a deeper understanding of the effects of new and traditional inputs on soil biology and the soil microbiome is the key to making evidence-based recommendations to farmers.
Prescriptive Retailers Can Help Farmers Maximize Outcomes
Information offered by retailers is particularly influential because it comes from trusted sources: the people who are selling and recommending the products that keep farms producing. These people are often retail sales reps with close ties to their local ag communities, and they play a critical role in building and sustaining customer relationships.
In today’s precision farming landscape, retailers need to maintain their position as invaluable advisors to their customers, especially since producers are in closer contact with their suppliers than ever before. Retailers that fail to meet the needs of modern farmers could risk having major input and equipment suppliers step in. The retailer-farmer partnership is thus key to ensuring the success of both parties.
Time To Stage an Ag Intervention?
When it comes to making the right input purchases, farmers often don’t have the time or expertise to evaluate their host of options. As a result, farmers can overspend or end up with inferior products that fail to deliver the expected results. Precision agriculture, therefore, requires new levels of retail intervention and guidance. This is where evidence-based technologies like BeCrop® Test can help retailers stand out from the competition.
BeCrop® Test focuses on 3 key properties of the soil: biodiversity, health, and nutrition. The resulting test data enables farmers to address blockages in nutrient cycling pathways, understand disease risk, protect plants, and improve the overall health of their crops and soil.
In fact, more than 8,000 farmers worldwide are working with healthier soil as a result of using BeCrop® Technology. BeCrop® uses the soil microbiome DNA, environmental data, and machine learning to analyze the functions of the microorganisms found in the soil. It identifies the biological pathways involved in crop health, resilience, yields, nutrition, stress adaptation, and more. User-friendly BeCrop® reports help translate this complex microbiome data into visual illustrations of the soil functions.
How Can BeCrop® Test Differentiate Retailers?
The most advanced biological testing, BeCrop® Test provides retailers with the actionable agronomy insights they need to recommend the right inputs and demonstrate their effects on soil health. The resulting BeCrop® Test reports will help retailers to:
- Recommend the most effective inputs based on the soil microbial profile
- Validate precision farming products and techniques
- Predict disease risk in time for farmers to act
- Grow customer trust and strengthen market leadership
Retailers today have a wide range of customers with different needs and expectations. Data-driven tools such as BeCrop® Test can support their product recommendations—whether made on the farm, in-store, or online.
BeCrop® Test can give both retailers and their customers the precise data they need to select products that will achieve the desired results. Retailers can sell the testing kits to farmers directly or provide testing as a service and be ready to confidently give product guidance and even demonstrate how farmers can use the product more effectively and reduce waste.
Gain a Competitive Advantage with Precision Farming Insights
To gain and retain a competitive edge, retailers need to be able to translate the latest science into actionable insights that help customers get the most out of their product investments and improve their businesses. Precision agriculture tools and strategies are helping leading retailers make data-driven recommendations that ensure healthy soil function, optimize customer input strategies, reduce costs, and maximize farm outcomes through advanced biological soil testing.
Want to learn more? Download the eBook – The Underground Retail Movement: How Precision Soil Input Recommendations Deliver Greater Customer Returns