Diseases, weeds and insects are just a few of the issues that could affect your crops. But, now there’s new technology that can detect those issues before they become a problem.
“I like to use a simple way of describing it. We kind of show you where the needles are in the haystack rather than you have to go find the needle,” says Doug Hoberty, Business Development Manager with Intelinair, which is based in Indianapolis.
Intelinair offers a service called AGMRI which uses satellites, drones and airplane flyovers to scan your farm ground for early detection of any issues that could affect your yield.
“We just show the users, via AGMRI, the fields that have issues going on and where in the fields those issues are and what we think the likely problem is,” says Hoberty. “Most farmers are farming thousands of acres now. You can’t get to all of them in a timely fashion, so we try to direct you and prioritize your work in those high risk or high issue areas.
One of Intelinair’s ag retailers is Co-Alliance. Cody Volz is their Digital Agronomy Lead and uses Intelinair’s AGMRI with his customers.
“We sit down with them [and] we talk to them about the program and we highlight how this program is going to benefit their farm and their operation [and] how we can partner and the better orders in advising them to get that higher return on investment with their crop,” says Volz.
He adds that Intelinair’s AGMRI has come in handy this spring.
“[With] part of that tool, there’s a stand count feature and were able to get an idea of how much of the crop is emerging,” says Volz. “We’ve had several instances where our salesmen are sitting down with the customer and giving them an idea of what fields they’ve planted and what that emergence looks like and if there’s areas for a replant opportunity. With all the rain that we’ve had, I think we’ll continue to use that here in the next couple of weeks as we see more of the crop emerge depending on where you’re at here in Indiana.”
Hoberty says another benefit to Indiana farmers and ag retailers is that the AGMRI software can be installed on your laptop or iPhone so you get the information you need right away.
“You can take your iPhone with you out to the field. That’s what Cody’s folks are doing in their scouting program. They’re being directed which fields to go to where and then they can go out and drop a pen and report what they’re seeing [and] take pictures. All that is automatically uploaded to AGMRI and goes out to the customer in real time,” says Hoberty.
For more information on Intelinair’s AGMRI, visit AGMRI.com.
Click BELOW to hear C.J. Miller’s report on how Intelinair’s AGMRI helps Indiana farmers and ag retailers with early detection of disease, weeds, insects and other issues affecting crops.
Click BELOW to hear the FULL interview with Doug Hoberty with Intelinair and Cody Volz with Co-Alliance how they work together to help Indiana farmers get the most of their yield.
