Granular expands farmland analysis tools on AcreValue website

A leading company in farm management software and analytical tools announced this week the release of an updated farmland analysis website.

Granular has significantly expanded its coverage area and several new management and analytical features on its free site called AcreValue. The website is used primarily by farmers, landowners, investors, bankers, brokers and other industry professionals to analyze the value and productive capacity of farmland. Farm management software is available to subscribers and includes exclusive content.

“Among professional farmers who use Granular, the talk is all about how to expand by finding the right land at the right price,” Tamar Tashjian, AcreValue's general manager, said. “We will provide our farmers with the tools to see how adding land will affect the efficiency and profitability of their specific operation and therefore what they should pay to lease or purchase it. At the same time, we are providing the whole agriculture industry with a single convenient and free site to access all publicly available farmland data.”

The AcreValue Automated Valuation Model (AVM) is used in both commercial and residential farms to analyze terabytes of data about soil, climate, crop rotation, taxes, interest rates, comparable land sales and crop prices to automatically estimate the value of farmland.

“Models can never fully predict what a given parcel of land will trade for because they can’t know supply and demand dynamics in advance,” Chris Seifert, lead data scientist on AcreValue, said. “However, professionals in the market can use the estimates from our AVM as an unbiased starting point for their own analysis and negotiations, and to easily compare the characteristics of different parcels of land.”