Taranis Changes the Conversation for Carolina Eastern – Dillon
For Will and Ronny Rice, the Carolina Eastern Crop Excellence program means one thing: providing the best service possible for the farmers they serve.
When the program was instituted eight years ago, the father-son duo jumped on board to provide a comprehensive experience: from soil sampling to crop scouting to nutritional recommendations, the program leaves no “leaf” unturned in a farmer’s crop.
“Our goal is always to help the farmer excel in their crop production,” says Ronny Rice, the co-owner of Carolina Eastern – Dillon and 40-year-plus ag retail veteran. “I’ve seen a lot of changes over the course of my career and one thing always stays the same, the better service you can provide – the more information you can give a farmer – the better you will do as a retailer.”
For the 2024 growing season, better service will include Taranis’ leaf-level imagery and insights powered by an artificial intelligence model that utilizes and compares in-field threats to a library of more than 500 million images – taken from crops and fields like those of Will and Ronny’s customers.
The Scouting Benchmark
“Taranis is the real deal. It’s another step for service when you can look at every acre on a computer screen, see what’s going on…what’s not going on…and scout more efficiently and effectively,” Ronny says. “It’s a step in the right direction for agriculture and a tremendous scouting benchmark.”
Will and Ronny have spearheaded the integration of Taranis within Carolina Eastern’s Crop Excellence program through their own use and excitement for the service, calling it the next logical step in precision agriculture for retailers. Will shares that while Taranis eliminates the guesswork of scouting, it also offers many other benefits for their retail location.
“We have seen where we have some variable rate seed scripts written, and Taranis picks up on that from the stand count images. It’s incredible how validating those images are. We can clearly see the different zones that we made,” he says. “You can literally see the different zones we created in the stand count maps.”
Information + Conversation = Stronger Relationships
Both Will and Ronny are excited for the stronger relationships Taranis has the potential to foster, a benefit they are already seeing with the customers who have enrolled acres.
“The question for data has always been, “What do I do with it?” Taranis takes away that question mark. I am looking at the Taranis dashboard and can see the exact same thing as my customer. I have a reason to pick up the phone and call him because I have something to talk to him about,” Will says. “As a retailer, that opens the door for me to not only identify the problem but to be right there with options for a solution. It’s not a sales call, it’s a conversation about how we are going to solve a problem.”
To learn more about Taranis crop intelligence and watch videos of Carolina Eastern and other ag retailers and growers in action with Taranis, visit Taranis.com/Testimonials.