Bushel Farm Launches With Goal of Streamlining Data via Farm Management Software
Since acquiring FarmLogs in 2021, Bushel has been working to introduce the next-generation of its farm management software. Being launched today is that solution: Bushel Farm.
It carries over much of what’s expected from its predecessor: easy-to-use and formats for desktop and mobile.
But it’s elevating the feature-set with a key focus on reducing manual data entry.
“The opportunities we knew we wanted to solve for with this software include taking farmers’ business digital, keeping track of records on the farm, and making better decisions—bringing something that ties those things together,” says Jake Joraanstad, CEO of Bushel.
Insights generated by automation within Bushel Farm include:
- Cost of production
- Marketing position (sold vs. unprotected production)
- Profitability of grain sales based on current market price
- Profit & loss at the farm, crop and field level
“The goal is getting the revenue side of the farm known—as a fact—in the tool without having to do a manual lift,” he says. “It’s really about the dollars and cents.”
After acquiring FarmLogs, Bushel’s team first worked on updating security parameters and permissions for the software. As a second step, they started to automate data collection, including enabling such functions with the John Deere Operations Center and Climate FieldView.
“Too much of farm data has relied on manual entry,” Joraanstad says. “That’s been the main Achilles Heel—data hasn’t been automated. It’s really important we automate more and more of the farm data record keeping, because the outcome of that is much more interesting than just the data.”
He highlights the capabilities of Bushel Farm are expanded from where FarmLogs was five years ago.
“The machine integration work we’ve done is impressive to measure cost per acre, cost per field,” he shares as an example.
Bushel is providing Bushel Farm via a three-tiered product approach, each with its own subscription price.
Three tiers to the tool:
- Lite: Fields, Recent Rainfall, Inputs, Scouting, Equipment, Maintenance Records, Rain & Heat History, Soil Maps, and Futures Prices
- Essentials: Basic Activities, Satellite Imagery, Local Prices, and Field Attachments, plus Lite
- Business: Integrations, Custom Activities, Land Costs, Reports, P&L, Work Orders, and Marketing, Plus Essentials
Joraanstad says it’s never been more critical for farms to think about the future requirements of data collection. He says the middle tier’s yearly subscription is $599, which “is cheaper than a trip to your favorite farm show.”
Additionally, Bushel is marketing group packages of subscriptions to its commercial customers (elevators, grain companies, ag retailers) to provide as a service to farmers and encourage digitization of their on-farm record checking.
Later this year, Bushel will release a one-of-a-kind integration to enable farmers to auto-populate their individual grain sales data in Bushel Farm.
“Our view is it’s difficult to build farm management software without it being complementary to another product or service like what Bushel has,” he says. “2,400 grain facilities use Bushel today. So any farmer using Bushel Farm will have access to those grain contracts.”
Joraanstad shares the big picture vision is to have the full marketing position of a farm at a farmer’s fingertips.
“In Bushel Farm the farmer will be able see and create a crop marketing plan. For example, sell 50% by July with estimated yield of a target level. That’s a decision-making point never done before, and the farmer won’t have to manually enter it all in,” he says.
