AI Powered Crop Intelligence Delivers the “Game Tape” for Every Field
With #plant23 right around the corner, every farmer is making preparations to get in the field. And it’s no secret that the preparations made today are some of the most important drivers of the numbers registered on the yield monitor next fall. The success of this year’s growing season started with the decisions made last fall and will continue throughout this growing season. That’s why top advisors recommend leveraging a “game tape” or digital record of events, weather and pest pressures and other influencers of crop performance and yield. A field’s “game tape” can make all the difference between black and red ink from year to year.
“When it comes to scouting, the earlier the better. Our agronomists are scouting before planting because we want to make sure that fields are clean and stay clean,” says Ag Partners Digital Lead, Ethan Noll. “As soon as that plant comes up, the emergence pass is incredibly important—it sets the stage for the rest of the growing season. Knowing what both the crop and weed stands look like as soon as possible puts you in a position to make decisions for replanting and that critical first herbicide pass.”
For Taranis’ Vice President of Retail, Sarah Betzold, that first Taranis drone mission that provides stand count analytics is the beginning of the “game tape” that positions agronomists with the best, real-time information to make decisions for the farmers they work with.
“We are the only crop intelligence platform that is 100% focused on helping advisors demonstrate value and build better relationships with their growers. We have developed models that pinpoint areas that could threaten yield throughout the season, and we’re able to deliver the value that builds relationships by quickly providing the leaf-level data. This allows for fast in-season decision-making…many times before we’d see it with our normal field walks or drive-bys,” says Betzold. “Think about the latest disease progressions throughout a field, Taranis artificial intelligence can identify the early onset of tar spot in the back corner of the field. This allows the agronomist and growers to develop treatment plans immediately.”
And it’s those leaf-level insights that truly set Taranis apart. Noll says that the biggest difference between Taranis and other scouting platforms is the lack of support for the story the imagery from other platforms tells. Most scouting platforms rely on RGB or NDVI imagery, only delivering a biomass measurement, with no ability to differentiate between weeds and plants.
The Taranis advantage puts stand count, both for a crop and the weeds that threaten it, in an agronomist’s inbox. The AI technology takes the human error out of scouting by allowing an entire field to be scouted without missing any acres. The imagery allows for an agronomist to zero in on “hot spots” that require more attention and prevent the dilemma of knowing where to start and stop within a field.
“Taranis is able to identify the weed, disease, nutrient deficiency, or pest that’s threatening yield because of the leaf-level analysis. You can map an area and the farmer can use his phone to see that he’s in an area that needs to be replanted. It’s so much more precise than driving around a field on a four-wheeler trying to decide which areas need to be replanted,” Noll says.
At the end of the season, each of those “hot spots”, the weed and pest pressures, and the replant acres tell their story on the yield monitor. Taranis’ data is there to provide the play-by-play, helping agronomists address and correct chemical program needs, nutrient deficiencies, seed concerns, and the gamut of variables that make every season a little different.
“It’s a lot easier to create plans based on the previous year’s information when you’re using Taranis because you have 100% of the information you need. I can look back at pictures and say, ‘Yeah, there was frost damage or there was a disease or nutrient deficiency”, and we can use that information to show the farmers exactly what happened,” says Noll. “It’s like having a season-long game tape to rewind whenever we need to.”