Putting Data To Work
These tech alliances take farmers into a new age of productivity.
By Jeff Caldwell

With two new partnerships, AGCO continues its commitment to providing innovative, practical solutions to farmers. Working with Farmobile—maker of the PUC, a mixed-fleet, real-time data capture device—and Aglytix, a data analysis company, AGCO is in the process of creating a “uniform data standard” across all of its equipment, enabling growers to capture data and do more with it than ever before. And, these partnerships help pave the way for a new, virtually untapped revenue stream for producers.
Currently available at select AGCO dealerships, with wider availability coming in 2018, services via this new alliance include placing Farmobile PUCs (Passive Uplink Connection devices) in AGCO tractors and combines, creating a common platform for all field data collection. More specifically, the PUC allows the secure sharing of agronomic data via wireless transmission. As a result, a producer and his or her partners, such as agronomists or retailers, can access information remotely—with permission granted by the farmer—saving valuable time as compared to having to physically hand off the data via thumb drives or other data storage devices.
“Our relationship with AGCO is going to have a meaningful impact in how it’s going to get all these different lines of machinery to talk together and collect data all in one place,” says Farmobile CEO Jason Tatge. “We’re providing AGCO customers the most robust data services in agriculture.”
Adds Aglytix CEO Jerry Johnson: “Our analytics platform opens up a new world of understanding for growers by putting this data to work to identify yield-limiting and excessive cost issues. It will add deeper insight and decision support for growers and their trusted crop advisers to make the best informed decisions possible.”
The integration into AGCO machinery of Aglytix software and Farmobile hardware, which works in most tractors and combines manufactured in the last 10 years, is also a move toward the “commoditization” of cropping data. It’s a major step toward a new era of crop production in which farmers—who will own their data in this system—will glean much more than decision-making power from precision tools. The data can add directly to his or her bottom line.
“Growers need a way to profit from all their data. We are building a Data Store where companies can become buyers of PUC-collected Electronic Field Record (EFR) data. This provides farmers control over their data with built-in ROI [return on investment] opportunities. For example, farmers could see something like $2 per acre for completed EFR data sets,” Tatge says.
“We can have farmers basically take royalties from their data,” continues Tatge. “They will get paid for it. But they’ll still own it and control it.”
“Whether they own all AGCO equipment or a mixed fleet, both partnerships will help producers improve efficiency and increase farm profitability,” says Eric Hansotia, senior vice president of AGCO Global Crop Cycle, Advanced Technology Solutions and Dealer Tech Support. “The end result will be an entirely new level of productivity support and insight for growers.”