The Farm Progress Show, a gigantic annual gathering of farmers and the companies that serve them, is as close to the chronological needle between crop production and harvest that exists. Historically, it’s the event that we at CropLife magazine attend to get a broader view of the season past, and a peek into the mood, the marketing plans, and big announcements to come for the year ahead.
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Buckets of Buckets
The hot giveaway item appeared to be the five-gallon bucket, which every fashionable farmer was using to haul around literature, business cards, hats, and other cool freebies.
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Symptoms of a Challenging Spring
On a more serious note, there was a definite undercurrent of uncertainty, both from the farmer attendees and the exhibitors, as this generally horrific season mercifully comes to a closure. Bankers and financial institutions on hand, when asked about the state of things, without exception raised their shoulders in a collective shrug, saying, “Gotta see how the harvest comes in.” A lack of crop marketing options and harvest uncertainty make future predictions virtually impossible, noted Aaron Johnson, Executive Vice President for Farm Credit Illinois (pictured). He and others we talked to indicated that they were ready to circle the wagons and help growers figure out financing, but that’s clearly creating heartburn in the Heartland.
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Hemp: Centralized Processing
Farm Progress acknowledged the skyrocketing interest in hemp production with a dedicated tent. Geoffrey Whaling (pictured), director of the National Hemp Association, held court all day and discussed the real difficulties, and potential opportunities in producing the crop. The biggest need among many is the establishment of post crop production processing, which Whaling believes is best done in a centralized “industrial park.” Canopy Growth of Canada is working on the first Hemp Industrial Park to be constructed in New York.
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Hemp: Dryers
IEC Thermo, an agriculture and commercial drying solutions company, showed a scale model of a dryer unit, and was generating a lot of grower interest. But Shawna Koch, Business Development and Sales Representative for the company, said the cost is out of range for most farmers. Pre-construction cost per unit ranges from $500,000 to $2 million depending on capacity. Koch added that cooperatives and retail dealerships would be logically positioned to process hemp.
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Encirca Gives Way To Granular
Meanwhile in the Pioneer tent, Granular account executive Kyle Kaufman (pictured) was talking about new features built in to the grower data portal – from improved access to imagery to a crop profitability calculator – including the incorporation of Encirca into a feature called Granular Agronomy. The Encirca name will be retired at year’s end.
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Syngenta Scouting Tool
Last year, Syngenta ran a pilot program with Sony’s Smart Agriculture Solution, dual-sensor camera mounted on a drone that collects NIR and NDVI images, and allows the end user to stitch the images in just 10 minutes. The program is set to expand regionally in 2020, said Charlie Siggs (pictured), Digital Agronomy Project Manager, and field stand count will be added to its whole-field imagery capability. It will be offered through ag retailers, but is built into the broader marketing program.
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Autonomy Demo
Full disclosure, the early week rains shut down the demonstration area on the day we attended, so we missed the demonstration of Smart Ag’s autonomous grain cart. But our friend Tim Norris, a field rep based in Ohio, shared the photo above and said that all went well. We do think that this application of autonomy is among the most practical and useful to farm production that’s moving through development.
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Data Access and Sustainability Transparency
Improving the access to and interaction with data was front and center for Winfield United at Farm Progress. Ryan Pieper (right), Technology Manager Lead at Winfield United, explained helping its affiliated locations to offer dashboards for farmer customers to view and interact with customizable field data and account information is a key initiative. Austin Poulter (left), Conservation Technology Manager at Land O' Lakes, demonstrated the company’s Truterra Insights Engine, which uses field data and farming practices to provide farmers with a score that relates to level of sustainability. The farmer can also change practices and inputs to see how the change impacts the sustainability score.
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New Data Platform
Combining a cloud-based connectivity device called CloudLynk with its Topcon Agriculture Platform, Topcon will be offering farmers a subscription-based service that will allow for streamlined movement of data between devices and the cloud that is color and manufacturer-agnostic. Farmers can also choose to share information easily with trusted partners and advisers. The system is being made available this month (September 2019). Jared Ochs, Global Product Manager for the TAP platform, demonstrated the system at Farm Progress.
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Nutrien Makes a Splash
Manufacturer and retail giant Nutrien took out a significant footprint at Farm Progress with its FutureDome concept, which included product displays and an indoor theater in the round.
While our market focus is the distribution channel, attending this farmer-focused event for one solid, blister-inducing day out of the three-day show is a highly worthwhile exercise for our editorial team. We put down our flag on the opening day, and did everything we could fit into eight hours of show time. And, after wreaking havoc on last year’s event in Iowa, the weather gods smiled graciously on Decatur, IL, providing three days of sun and comfortable temperatures.
But beyond the usual coffee shop talk there were a few interesting takeaways we gathered from this monster gathering of Midwest farmers. Here are several of our top items in the slideshow above.
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01510 Key Takeaways from Farm Progress 2019
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Schrimpf, an award-winning journalist, has covered the agriculture market since 1998. He is Group Editor of the Agribusiness Group at Meister Media Worldwide, with full editorial responsibility for CropLife®, CropLife IRON, and PrecisionAg® Professional.See all author stories here.
September 9, 2019 
