Agriculture faces the daunting challenge of feeding a rapidly growing global population on fewer acres and with greater transparency.

Digital agriculture will play a crucial role in meeting those challenges.

“We know that farmers and consultants face increasing pressure around the cost of inputs, the cost of land, the cost and the availability of labor, along with an increasing demand to make better decisions,” says LeAnna Guerin, data director of digital farming solutions, Bayer Crop Science.

“The good news is that through the work you all are doing with your partners, with farmers and with companies like Bayer and others, new technologies are coming out. We're in a good spot to meet those challenges,” Guerin said during the opening session of the recent Texas Plant Protection Association annual meeting in Bryan.

“Digital is going to be a big part of those solutions.”

Digital agriculture platforms

Digital agriculture platforms, she explained, employ tools to collect and visualize data and also to help consultants and producers understand how to improve efficiency.

“Digital is an opportunity to manage data and to use it to make better decisions.”

Bayer’s FieldView helps farmers analyze data to see what worked and what didn’t, she said.

Guerin listed key advantages to digital agriculture, including the potential to:

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Refining product development

She said Bayer will use digital solutions to refine product development. “We will focus research and development on innovations in seed and crop protection products.

“We want to evaluate how well we understand how a product performs. Also, we want to learn how environmental factors influence seed and crop protection products and understand how customers make decisions to increase productivity.”

Digital tools also help producers meet sustainability demands with data to prove compliance or improvements. “We believe farmers who participate in regenerative agriculture should be rewarded for those practices,” Guerin said.
“Digital tools allow them to move from knowing about data and looking at that data to moving into how to use data to make informed decisions through understanding environmental conditions on their fields.”

Guerin also emphasized data security. “Your data is your data. It’s your decision on who shares it.”

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