Midwest | gofurit - 7/23/2016 07:22
They are much more than a place to buy cheap chemicals. Much more.
I am a member currently but will not be renewing my membership. They started out looking promising but here's what I have found out after about a year of membership. I pay them to take MY data to do no more analyzing than I can do on my own. They try to compare me to other farms in my area which is irrelevant to me considering it doesn't take into account any input costs. I could be yielding higher than any of the other farms but not netting more per acre than them. Or I could be yielding lower but netting more due to inputs and vice versa. So really it doesn't help me one but. I can already access state and county averages if I want to benchmark my yields. They try to recommend seed varieties to me based on soil type. This is flawed also because of several reasons: every year is different, every farm manages different, and the variety that more members are planting are more likely to have higher ratings due to more data on it, eve. Of they aren't as good as some other varieties that are available but not in the system. Their input procurement is a joke. The one product I inquired about would take them a week to get to me in season even though they are boasting about next day shipping (false advertising). No warranty, product support or returns. No local reps to deal with face to face for recommendations or tank mix. ( I know that's not a big deal to some but at times can be valuable.) No rebates on any products. With my liberty and powermax rebates I would be losing on thousands. With rebates I could get my per acre cost of name brand powermax cheaper than their generic equivalent, plus I could get it custom applied if needed. Once they have my data, who knows what they will do with it, especially being owned by google, one of the biggest data syncs in the world. Their farmer progress polls are neat with the maps they provide but, who else are they giving the data to before it's released back to the farmer. Honestly as a farmer I think we need to start placing value in our data we collect, not paying people to take it. |
Farmers business network??
