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IT has Become a Major Part of the Agriculture Industry

Agriculture runs on information, from understanding different soils to making decisions on planting and plant maintenance.

(TNS) — Big data has come to farm country. That fact was on display at the Illinois Chemical & Fertilizer Association’s annual trade show, held last week at the Peoria Civic Center.

John Deere, Monsanto, DuPont and other Big Ag heavyweights were on the scene but so were companies like AgSync, FarmLink and SST Software.

“Big Data is a big buzz word in ag right now,” said Barry Bewley, a technology specialist with Effingham-based CropIMS, one of the many data companies with a booth at the Peoria show.

Agriculture runs on information — from understanding different soils to making decisions on planting and plant maintenance, he said.

“We sell equipment for spreaders and sprayers but we also manage farmers’ data for them. We help them crunch that data,” said Bewley.

At another booth, Chad Trachsel, a salesman for IFARM, a Fairbury-based company, was also looking to help farmers collect data and crunch numbers.

At 30, Trachsel has never known an ag scene without computers and GPS positioning. “I grew up on a family farm. Using data to make farm decisions makes perfect sense,” he said.

Trachsel noted the soil evaluation, the first step in deciding how a farmer should proceed, was not an alien notion to producers. “But farmers fear that if (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency regulations on fertilizer use come down, soil analysis will be mandatory,” he said.

At the IFARM booth, Lea Potter demonstrated Morning Farm Report, the first product from Champaign-based Agrible, “a very small start-up company,” she said.

“We think it’s the most scientifically-sound product on the market,” said Potter, demonstrating the software on one of the many computer screens in use at the show.

Over at the Ranco Fertiservice booth, Jim Heschke explained that the Sioux Rapids, Iowa-based company that he’s worked with for the past 12 years helps farmers make optimum use of the fertilizer they buy.

- “We brought our volumetric blending system to the market in 1962,” he said of Ranco’s storage system that farmers set up in the barn.

Precision Planting isn’t just the name of the Tremont-based company that Monsanto purchased in 2012 for $250 million but describes what agriculture is focused on these days: precision.

The trade show is evidence of farmer interest in what technology can bring — from genetically-enhanced seed to tools that prescribe how much seed to put in the ground and at what depth.

But Big Data has its downside, said Bewley. “Farmers are a little leery about sharing data with other people,” he said.

“What happens to that data when it’s uploaded. Is it secure? That’s a big issue right now,” said Bewley.

Efforts undertaken by AgGateway Corp., a nonprofit organization, and Monsanto’s Climate Corp. division are working on ways to assure farmers of their privacy when it comes to facts about their fields, he said.

AgGateway, which lists 200 ag-related businesses as partners, noted that “Expanding the use of (online business) is essential to many facets of modern ag production, including just-in-time inventory, traceability, sustainability (waste reduction, water management, resource allocation) and efficient use of manpower.”

Bewley said it still comes down to the human factor. “Farmers are pretty private people. It can be a little unsettling for them to have all this data and not know where it’s going,” he said.

©2015 the Journal Star (Peoria, Ill.)