Data for Conservation Agriculture

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Could farmers get paid based on conservation practices in the future? Many seem to think so, but it will require data on those practices to be collected and managed. That’s why Land O Lakes, one of the nations’ largest agricultural cooperatives, has developed the Truterra Insights Engine. Here’s Truterra vice president Jason Weller.

Weller… “So it's a way we can distill down soils information, weather information, slope and topography information. And then we amalgamate on top of that the mangement information that the farmer shares with us. A lot of that is precision ag data that's coming off their planter or combine. And so with that, we give them a composite look of first: we benchmark the sustainability of every field. So we have a benchmarking score called the insight score. We give them KPIs around erosion, nitrogen use efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, (and) soil carbon sequestration.”

This relies on a combination of publicly available information and private data that the farmer volunteers.

Weller… “Secondly, we give them a profit map. We help them visualize where that field is making money and losing money. The third component is we have a soil health soil insights platform. Where we give them high resolution understanding of erosion events and soil carbon sequestration opportunities in their soils.”

Weller says their goal is to help farmers find opportunities that both make them more sustainable, but also improve their return on investment.