On January 27^th, Elite Crop members gathered at Crossroads Pavilion in Sheldon for the annual Elite Crop Member Meeting. The meeting started with Cody Van Drie reviewing the past growing season and presenting the group data. The group data consists of hundreds of thousands of acres of information in Northern Iowa, Southern Minnesota, and Southeast South Dakota. The large amount of acres provide a good pool of information to query though and look for different trends or certain management practices that affected yield and grower profitability. Different trends and management practices that affected yield were presented at the meeting to give members insights into what possible changes they could make on their own operations to increase yields or profitability. 

The next couple of speakers up were from Iowa State University. First was Christopher Murphy from the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State. Murphy’s talk was Aerial Imagery in Agriculture, where he discussed different types of imagery and ways to utilize this imagery to make more informed decision on your own operation for increased yield or profitability. 

Dr. Chad Hart from Iowa State’s Department of Economics was up next where he talked about grain and livestock market outlooks. Hart informed the group about current events happening around home and the globe that currently are or could possibly start to affect agricultural markets here in Iowa in the near future. 

The afternoon continued with Brenton Rossman from Premier Crop Systems, the company who provides the software for Elite Crop, previewing new functionality and capabilities that will soon be available to Elite Crop members. First, Brenton showcased the new Data Visualization tool that will allow growers to view and interact with their data differently than ever before. Growers will be able to break their data down in to different categories such as fertility, seed, economics, etc. and benchmark themselves vs different groups of larger data sets to see where they compare to the group. This will help them see what parts of their operations they are having success and also help point out areas of opportunities where they could make some changes to increase the profitability of their operations. Lastly, Brenton gave an overview of a new feature that will be available in the future called NexGen Rx. Using on farm trial data generated from the Elite Crop members, NexGen Rx will help make variable rate recommendations customized to fit every different productivity zone in your fields. 

Cody finished up the meeting by looking ahead to the 2020 Elite Crop growing season and working to setup trials to generate knowledge to benefit 2020 Elite Crop members operations. If you are interested in learning more about Elite Crop reach out to our Elite Crop Lead, Cody Van Drie (712-348-4064) or talk to your local agronomist.