Using the power of digital technology to make every acre count
How two very different farming operations are using Cropwise to drive decision making.
Across five acres of land, Avinash Ghodekar farms a variety of crops, growing sugarcane, vegetables and herbs. His farm in Maharashtra, India, is one of hundreds of thousands of smallholder operations across the country.
As Avinash says: “The land is like a mother to us, just like a mother feeds her children, the land feeds millions of people in this country.”
But farming isn’t without its struggles. One of the most serious issues facing smallholders like Avinash are the constant threats to harvests.
“There are lots of problems for us farmers, like the problems of thrips, white flies and caterpillars. To manage them, we need technical support.”
An agronomist in your pocket
To support farmers like Avinash, Syngenta has developed Cropwise Grower: a dependable, accessible and intuitive tool, providing agronomic knowledge to farmers through their mobile phone.
Available in 18 different languages, more than three million farmers have downloaded the app.
The Cropwise Grower app helps smallholders use data to drive their decision making.
The Cropwise Grower app helps smallholders use data to drive their decision making.
Avinash explains the value of Cropwise Grower: “It helps us a lot. I use the Crop Doctor function, if we go to the farm and spot any disease then we take a photo of a problem in the field, upload it, and they reply to us with a suggestion.”
But Cropwise Grower doesn’t just offer advice. Through the app, farmers can get alerts for weather or pests before they become a problem, and even track commodity prices to help their businesses succeed.
Growers using the app get tailored, actionable advice in their own language whenever they need it.
Growers using the app get tailored, actionable advice in their own language whenever they need it.
For smallholders like Avinash, this technology isn’t just about solving problems, but finding ways of maximizing yields.
He says: “We must use technology. Applications like Cropwise Grower should be installed on our mobile phones. Old-fashioned farming simply won't work. We've got to race ahead in farming.”
Monitoring a field from five states away
Avinash walks his five acres every day. But across the world, farms from only a few acres to thousands of acres can be monitored from five states away. Farms of every scale are discovering that the difference between a good harvest and a lost one isn’t just about what happens in the field, but the insights that can be gathered through data.
At Black Gold Farms in the United States, data and technology are essential tools.
John Halverson is a fourth-generation American farmer, and the Chief Farming Officer at Black Gold Farms – one of the biggest potato farms in the United States, with 12 locations across the country from Florida all the way to Minnesota.
John Halverson is Chief Farming Officer at Black Gold Farms.
John Halverson is Chief Farming Officer at Black Gold Farms.
But even a country-spanning operation starts from small beginnings. John says: "My great grandfather was a bank teller in the small town of Forest River, North Dakota. He ended up with about 10 acres of land from a deal gone bad - and he decided to grow potatoes. That was the very first potato production at Black Gold, and we still own that 10 acres."
Running a multi-site operation means that technology is essential not just to monitor crops but to get the best from every harvest. John says: “We grow potatoes in a lot of non-traditional potato production areas, battling environments that are not exactly perfect for potatoes."
Data from the Cropwise platform helps Black Gold manage their operations and drive improvements in crop quality.
Data from the Cropwise platform helps Black Gold manage their operations and drive improvements in crop quality.
But thanks to Cropwise, distance and scale aren’t barriers to insight.
Travis Allen, Black Gold’s Head of IT, explains: "Cropwise Protector helps us be able to see what's going on even though we're not in the same local area. People in headquarters can see all the different farms and how they're operating."
Cropwise Protector also offers geo-located scouting reports, allowing agronomists and farm leadership to see precisely where problems might be on the ground.
John says: "In the Protector part of Cropwise, I can snap a picture, geo-reference it, put a note in - 'I'm seeing some early blackleg up into the mid canopy.' The farm sees it too. Since last night I had three notifications from Cropwise that said 'new data in Protector'. So that's one of the first things I did this morning - go to those three fields and look at the new information."
Across the business data is being constantly generated and fed back in to help the Black Gold team make better, more informed decisions.
Travis says: "We pull the Cropwise platform data every hour to make sure we are up to date - knowing when things are getting applied and when we're using things. And our financial data, that's every five minutes. As transactions happen, we need to know."
This kind of speed and technological infrastructure helps drive day-to-day operations and allows for continuous improvement in the farm’s product. Syngenta also ensures that farms like Black Gold retain complete control over their proprietary data.
With an operation spanning multiple sites, digital technology allows Black Gold to monitor fields remotely.
With an operation spanning multiple sites, digital technology allows Black Gold to monitor fields remotely.
Travis points out data itself is a valuable commodity. "Our partnership with Syngenta Cropwise platform is critical for our company. Black Gold isn't just in the potato growing business - data is a component of the business itself - it helps us do better and provide better output and better potatoes.”
Black Gold’s near 100-year history may have started from just 10 acres, but it stretches across the entire country, a generational legacy managed and optimised through the newest technology. John says: "I'm so lucky to be able to produce the most perfect food in the world."
Whether a farm is five acres or 50,000 acres, both Avinash and the team at Black Gold know that access to data is the great leveller: putting power in farmers' hands and unlocking greater productivity along the way.
Explore the stories of two very different farming operations and see how modern agronomic technology bridges the gap.
