Ag Data Experts

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Data is changing the way we do business across almost every industry. Agriculture is no different, but capturing, organizing, analyzing, and converting farm data into useful actions is still not a reality for most farmers. When Pat Smith wanted to better utilize his data on his hops and apples farm, he decided to go back to school for a master’s degree in business analytics.

Smith… “I started really looking outside of farming, outside of hops and apples at what other people are doing with data and analytics. And we would get creative with how we were acquiring data. We invented some new systems and technology to take data and try to understand some of our harvest process, specifically the drying process a little bit better. And what I saw was that my skill set was reaching its limit.”

Even with his education in business analytics, he needed more help in areas such as data engineering.

Smith… “It was multiple data sets and they were in multiple different places. And it was like, wait a second. How do I take this data that's in this system, and this data that's in this other system, and I know that they have a relationship and I want to understand that relationship. How do I do that?”

Smith recruited a team to help him bring all of this together. The group formed a new company, Loftus Labs, to help other farmers and agribusinesses leverage their data as well.