Ben Potter

Ben Potter writes about the many new on-farm technologies that make farmers better, faster, more efficient and more profitable. He has more than 9 years of experience writing for a cotton publication and an advertising agency serving agribusiness clients. This helped him build a strong foundation of agronomic and crop-protection knowledge for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts and a variety of specialty crops. Ben attended both the University of Missouri (journalism) and the University of Memphis (technical writing). Ben’s grandparents were corn and soybean farmers, and his father was a soil scientist with the USDA. Away from work, Ben keeps busy with a broad range of activities, whether it’s long-distance running, growing habanero peppers or spending quality time with his wife and two daughters.

Latest Stories
Lee Lubbers finds success by building first-rate relationships
Government agency clears easier path for commercial use.
Venture capital is beckoning second green revolution
At the very heart of agriculture is the drive to feed the world. AgTech is enabling farmers to do this more efficiently and effectively than ever, and major investors are watching closely.
You can sell quite a lot of things on eBay – but you can’t sell corn and soybean bushels. You can sell them on a website called FarmLead, however. The online grain marketplace, which was started in Canada in 2013, hopes to expand significantly in the U.S. this year.
Bowery, an indoor farming company that deploys a lot of high-tech solutions – including propriety software systems, robotics and monitoring plants via machine learning – announces it has secured a Series A funding round of $20 million from several investors, including General Catalyst, GGV and GV.
Memphis-based AgLaunch Accelerator says it’s critical for agriculture to advance and adapt to keep up. With a fresh $50,000 investment, the group intends to put new technologies into farmers hands, faster.
Did your go-to on-farm truck make the list?
Kelley Blue Book has punched the numbers, and the cost for mid-size and full-size pick-up trucks are on the rise.
Fred Whitford, director of Purdue Pesticide Programs, isn’t one to mince words – and he certainly didn’t when talking about truck accidents with attendees of the 2016 Farm Journal Corn College.