What do you know about your cost per bushel? Most of us know the cost of raising one bushel of corn or soybeans across an entire farm operation. And maybe some of us even know what it cost to raise one bushel on each individual field. But most of us don’t know what it cost in each different area across each field. 

Elite Crop continues to evolve with your needs and is now focused on an in-depth look at your Return on Investment. Elite Crop is geared to help growers measure the everyday decisions that are made in their operations and determine ways to drive down their cost per bushel. Profitability is crucial in finding long-term success and throughout the year, decisions are made with profitability in mind. When we use variable rate technology or change management practices across the field, we affect the placement and amount of dollars we invest on each acre. Elite Crop wants to help the grower take the next step and explore a way to see not only the variance of different agronomic attributes across a field, but also look at the variance of profitability across the growers acres. Getting a true spatial cost per bushel map is a different way to look at how to manage long-term profitability on growers operations. 

Elite Crop is built with your data and gives you the ability to make more informed agronomic and economic decisions from a whole operation level all the way down to management zones and each 60’ x 60’ cell in the field. This is achieved by pairing a cost to all inputs and spatially looking at ROI across each field and what affects it. With this information, more informed decisions can be made with seed, fertilizer, lime, manure, seed treatments, fungicide, etc. In certain situations, you will find that you are investing too much in some areas of your field and not getting the best ROI on that part of the field! With this deep insight, we will be able to assist you in making adjustments across your operation to help improve your ROI and increase your profitability. These reports might also be very useful during conversations with bankers or landlords and provide added information.

Along with the focus on economics, Elite Crop still provides many other aspects to the program. Grid soil sampling and yield data are the building blocks of Elite Crop. Pairing your personal knowledge of each field along with utilizing grid samples, soil types, yield, historical information, trial and Learning Block results, etc. we are able to develop management zones from which we can build VR nutrient and seed recommendations. Many layers of different attributes are added to each 60’ x 60’ cell in a field and finally overlaid with yield data. From there we are able to query the data and look for different factors that affect ROI and yield, giving you the opportunity to implement changes that directly affect your bottom line. 

Easy access to your data whenever and wherever you want is very important in today’s world. Elite Crop provides a mobile app called DATAVIEW. DATAVIEW gives you the ability to access spatial soil test, applied nutrient, soil type, management zone, seed rate, yield, past yields, variety/hybrid, cost/bu and other cost attribute maps from your mobile device. DATAVIEW can also be accessed through a web browser on a computer along with Optix. Optix is an online tool that allows you to view group data in graphical form. This allows for a different way of viewing the data and trying to pick out trends. 

If you are currently grid sampling and collecting yield data, Elite Crop could be a great fit for you! If you have questions or are interested in learning more about Elite Crop, contact your local agronomist or give me a call at 712-348-4064 and we would be glad to help. 

-Cody Van Drie