Managing an increasing amount of ag data

Ranching in Northern California

Payne Brothers Ranches are located just north of Sacramento, in the Knights Landing, California area. On their ranches, measuring 6,000 acres in total, Brothers Bob and Bill Payne have walnut, almond and pistachio trees as well as a row crop operation that grows a rotation of processing tomatoes, garbanzos, sunflowers, wheat and barley. Their father started the farming operation back in 1953, with Bob and Bill taking over the helm around 30 years ago.

Bob remarks: “Although we’re still farming on the same ranches, a lot has changed in 30 years. We’ve moved from a 100% row crop operation to planting more and more permanent crops like walnuts, pistachios and almonds. In that same time, we have also moved from using PCA’s affiliated with chemical companies to independent PCA’s. This transition is part of what got us interested in Agworld in the first place – when we started to use independent PCA’s we had to start submitting our own chemical use reports to the counties and state etc. We didn’t want this to turn into a lot of paperwork for us and when we realized that Agworld makes this simple and lets us create and submit these reports with one click of the button, the decision was made to adopt Agworld.”

“Having to do our own chemical use reports is really part of a larger trend that sees more and more data coming our way. Previously we had no way of managing this flow of data and we ended up with different parts of the puzzle in separate places. When it came to using data to perform analyses, that really stopped us from deriving any useful conclusions from our data. And it’s not only chemical use data, but also soil reports, tissue analysis and many other layers of data that started to come towards us increasingly in larger volumes and it became a bit frightening, as the repercussions of not having the correct data available or interpreting data wrong can be big. After we looked at some other farm management software providers, we decided to implement Agworld so we could capture all of our data and have it in one spot.”

“We also recognized that Agworld would allow us to comply with worker protection standards because we are able to show the time and date of pesticide applications. After applying pesticides to a field, we can show any re-entry interval restrictions that we have and keep people out and keep our workers safe. Although it might seem trivial to outsiders, any rancher will understand the importance of adhering to work safety legislation and especially being able to do so without the burden of additional paperwork. I can truly say that Agworld makes my life easier in this respect!”

Adopting Agworld as a team

As soon as Bob and his team saw what Agworld could do for them, they decided to implement Agworld in their organization: “I put an inquiry into the website and the very next day Zach called me, and he was out in my office a couple of days after. The platform really seemed to make sense to me when I realized that I can send jobs out to my foremen and my foremen can see the job and complete it on the platform. I basically made the decision right then and there to start using Agworld.”

When the time came to implement Agworld on Payne Brothers Ranches, Bob and Bill decided to fully implement it straight away. Bob: “With the implementation, I did the whole ranch at once. I put every one of our ranches on there and got an iPad for my foreman, and trained him to do anything he needs to on Agworld. Of course, that was a learning curve to go through, but I could tell that I was going to like the software – and the support that comes with it. I had a lot of questions in the first year but I’d follow up with the Agworld Customer Success team and they would just take care of things so much faster than I had ever seen with any other software… that really makes the difference!”

“Our PCA didn’t get involved in the first year, but that changed in the next season. And that’s really where the power of Agworld lies; getting everyone on the same platform and connecting them so they can work together and benefit from the collaborative aspect of the platform.”

Analysing complex layers of data

Once Payne Brothers Ranches had integrated Agworld within their organization, they were able to start capturing any incoming data and store it on the Agworld platform. Bob: “Agworld really helped us capture this increasing flow of incoming data and took the pressure off me. But not only does Agworld capture the data for me, it also offers me a cross analysis tool that I really like. The analysis capabilities of Agworld have been one of the biggest benefits for me.”

“With Agworld, I am now able to see, field by field, the operations that are going across that field year by year. If I had more operations than I’d planned, or less, or if I spent more on fertilizer or pesticides than I had planned. Everything has become so easy to see in one glance and this really has given me a good control over our operations.”

“Because of the analytical capabilities of Agworld, I feel really confident in the crops that we grow every year; more so than I did before. And that is big to me: having peace of mind that I have all important data available to me, that I am able to extract any kind of analytical report, and that I can be confident in the crops that we grow. Agworld offers me just that, and that’s why I like using Agworld.”

Bob concludes with: “Agworld is one of the most useful tools that we’ve added to our ranch. I think that, after incorporating GPS on our ranch, Agworld is the second most important technology that we have added for simplicity; it helps us prevent errors, it makes us more precise and has lifted our worker protection standards.”