Agriculture

Free digital software helps farmers advance fieldwork online

Published

4 years ago

December 13, 2020

As agriculture continues to grow, so do innovations in the industry and opportunities to create digital workspaces for farm fields.

Granular launched Granular Insights in February 2020 and since then, more than 15,000 U.S. farmers adopted the free digital tool, according to Ken O’Brien with Granular. O’Brien said the software looks at harvest data and can highlight unique and regionalized trends to help farmers plan for future growing seasons.

“If I had to give it a tagline, it is that we designed it to drive a farmer’s profitability with the data that they have,” O’Brien said. “We’re trying to do that in as simple of a manner as possible while giving them fast time to value so they can see results that bring them significant value in a hurry.”

He explained how farmers can upload planted and harvest data to Granular and create summaries from the information.

“They are waiting there for you to look at things, understand how your operation’s decisions impacted your profit as well as the yield for this crop season,” O’Brien said. “Ditch the spreadsheet. Ditch the notebooks, and get to a spot where it is digital and it happens faster, and they get to results even sooner.”

Most functions of the tool are currently limited to corn and soybeans, but directed scouting that is a combination of satellite imagery and proprietary algorithms can be used on a variety of crops.

Related Topics:corn crops farm granular granular insights soybeans

Kaitlyn Riley

Kaitlyn Riley’s passion for communications started on her family’s dairy farm in Gays Mills, Wis. Wanting to share agriculture’s story, she studied strategic communications and broadcast journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In college, she held officer positions with the Association of Women in Agriculture and Badger Dairy Club while volunteering as a news reporter for the college radio station. She also founded the university’s first agricultural radio talk show, AgChat. In her professional career, Kaitlyn has worked in radio, print and television news doing everything from covering local events to interviewing presidential candidates, and putting back on her barn boots to chat with farmers in the field. Today, Kaitlyn can be seen covering local stories that matter to you in the La Crosse area.