The benefits of digitizing your farm business with AgConnexion

According to Hicham Bencharki, Manager of Digital Product and Innovation at Sollio Agriculture, there are many practical benefits to digitizing your farm business. Here’s a look at just some of them.

Collaboration is easier

Our farms are getting bigger and bigger, and more people—professionals, business partners, employees—are involved in running them. Going digital makes it easier for everyone to work together by enabling more active and efficient communication and strengthening engagement and business relationships. For example, everyone has much easier access to the operations schedules and data that they need to manage the business.

Information is readily available

In North America, where growing seasons can be short and windows of opportunity, limited, time is a precious commodity. It is often necessary, and even critical, to make quick and efficient decisions about sowing, applications, treatments, harvesting and grain sales. The large amount of data involved is easier to interpret when it is digitized. When you digitize your farm, the information is more readily available, for example, on a mobile device (smartphone or tablet).

All your information is in one place

AgConnexion’s one-stop shop improves access to information, with everything stored securely and confidentially in one place. Less time is spent searching for information in multiple places, and the user experience is greatly improved.

Administrative management is simplified

A farm is run by a team. That’s why the entire administrative side of the business can also be managed through AgConnexion, where you can store and archive invoices, account statements and shipping orders, as well as all other agronomic documents, including:

• Agri-environmental fertilization plans (PAEF)

• Water analyses

• Soil analyses

• Forage analyses

• Weather data

That’s how AgConnexion can help you become more efficient.

Overview

Digitizing your farm business gives you an accurate overview of your data on:

• Plots

• Buildings

• Production

• Equipment

• Sales and purchases

For example, the following are recorded from one year to the next:

• Varieties used

• Seeding rates

• Plot maps

• Products applied

• Yields

• Livestock productivity

• And more

With this data, you can understand your business in greater detail. For each year, you can see your profitability, yields, input costs, products applied, and number of hectares sown, as well as the weather conditions and the technical-economic indicators of your livestock.

Digitizing your farm also makes it easier to adopt new technologies as they become available. “Pencil and paper notetaking is here to stay,” said Bencharki, “but digitization brings many benefits and should be prioritized by farm businesses.”

He added: “The earlier you start digitizing, the faster you will become efficient.” It’s never too late to get started! Talk to your agri-advisor about it today.

Source: Cooperateur. This article originally appeared in the June 2021 magazine.