3 Biggest Management Opportunities For Farmers With Technology

At the end of 2023, Bushel conducted its State of The Farm survey via email with 871 farmer respondents to give perspective on their businesses and adoption of technology. More than half of the respondents were in the Southern Plains and Midwest.

From the results, the three highest-rated management opportunities included: 

• increasing operational efficiencies
• improving marketing strategy 
• tracking/improving field performance

“We are really in a second phase of ag tech,” says Ryan Raguse, co-founder of Bushel. “We aren’t in an overly mature state—we’re still somewhere in the middle ground. The farmers who are growing in scale are the ones who are adopting technology, and they are thinking of how the tools relate to their business.” 

Raguse says it’s Bushel’s focus to bring in the next era of value chain productivity for ag with its digital infrastructure to move data, transactions and money. 
As such, there are examples from the State of the Farm report highlighting aspects of those three top opportunities respondents brought to the forefront. 

Operational efficiency:

Year over year, there’s been a 12% decrease in farmers receiving grain contract payments via paper check. 

The younger respondents, under 40, were more likely to value a quicker time span from requesting payment to receiving the funds. 

Of all digital payment processors, 24% of survey respondents say they used at least one. 

A new tool in the toolbox Bushel is releasing for spring 2024, will give customers of Compeer Financial access to their lines of credit and repayment via Bushel Wallet. This was piloted last fall and will be rolled out this year with Compeer, with future financial partners to be announced. 

Another interesting finding from the study is farmer preference for texting as the No. 1 preferred method to receive information from grain buyers, highlighting a desire for efficiency over personal relationships. 

Marketing strategy: 

From the study results, high-growth producers are more likely to price multiple crop years and price when profits are achievable. 

Large-scale producers are more likely to follow an advisor’s recommendation(s), and price when profits are achievable. 

More than 1/3 of farmers who have 2,000+ acres are comfortable marketing 50% of their crop at or before planting. However, only 25% of smaller-scale farm respondents feel the same. 

In the study, Bushel offered 11 marketing strategies as an option, and the larger, growing farms used nearly all of them. 

The most relied-on resource for grain marketing is local grain buyers by 38% of respondents.

Today, Bushel’s Network includes 45%+ of U.S. Grain Origination and 2,600 grain buying locations. 

Field level performance: 

One takeaway from the study is there is aggressive adoption of technology by younger and growing in scale farmers. 

More than half of respondents say apps and software have created value on their farm by increasing convenience. When looking at the data based on age of respondent, farmers under 40 are more aligned to see the value in how to manage costs and increase revenue.

Top activities apps/software are used for: weather, accounting, financial record-keeping, yield mapping, and farm management. 

“What’s interesting is whether it’s digital payments, auto-steer, or other technology, once a farmer adopts it, they don’t stop using it. Maybe it’s not something they asked for directly, but if they see the value, they keep using it,” Raguse says.