Online tool in works to let farmers gauge productivity, market factors

New technology will allow farmers to evaluate their field-by-field productivity and marketplace dynamics through a collaboration announced today between DTN/The Progressive Farmer and FarmLink.

The subscription-only online tool will be available before the 2016 planting season for row-crop farmers.

"As we've collected and analyzed yield, soil, weather and other relevant data sets during the last five years, we've developed the most robust, actionable agriculture indices in history. As data and farm analytics become a key driver of a farmer's business-management tools, collaborations like this will help transform agriculture by increasing the profitability and sustainability of farm operations," Dave Gebhardt, chief strategy officer for FarmLink, said.

The goal of the collaboration between FarmLink and DTN/The Progressive Farmer is to help farmers obtain real-time, personalized data to make more profitable decisions.

DTN/The Progressive Farmer has a hyper-local weather network and a large database of local prices. Gebhardt said these resources will help farmers on a daily basis in ways that were unavailable before now.

The technology not only will include daily information, but also future projections on topics such as yield potential, local market value and weather effects on crops. Gebhardt said the collaboration between DTN/The Progressive Farmer and FarmLink will be paramount in the transformation of agriculture through data science and technology.