We’d like to share in advance a look into Climate LLC research pipeline in the words of Chief Science Officer Brian Lutz, aided and supported by the managers of our Climate Research Farms and Digital Ag & Sustainability Lead Dr. Pamela Bachman.
With over half of FieldView users performing trials on their acres, Climate FieldView is evolving its product offering to integrate and facilitate farmer experimentation and farmer-dealer collaboration into its platform. These features will allow customers to measure and share product performance in experiments they’re already running on their operations.
The Climate Trial Advisor program leverages advanced models trained on over 14 million acres’ worth of data to provide split-planted hybrid seed recommendations that pair a farmer’s planned hybrid with a selection that Climate models predict will result in higher yields.
Model advancements in 2020 enabled us to expand our predictions to non-Bayer products. We show that when recommending a Bayer product against a competitor product, we can predict with a win rate of >63% and outperform the competition by >4bu/ac. (Data are from 7,179 on-farm trials conducted by FieldView growers in 2019-2020 across 13 states).
Climate is driving a new approach to managing plant disease, with outcome-based farmer-dealer partnerships that provide a performance guarantee when recommendations are taken. Field trials conducted through the company’s Delaro Performance Showcase, testing the efficacy of the Delaro fungicide, have highlighted the positive effects of properly timed applications through simple placement of an untreated check-strip in the middle of a treated field.
This straightforward, outcome-guaranteed program, monitored through the season in FieldView, will help enhance farmers’ management decisions in efforts to improve profitability and environmental stewardship. Early results validate our models’ ability to predict disease risk and fungicide response, with an average of greater than 6 bu/ac lift with proper application.
The Climate FieldView platform extensively tests new model capabilities, and new product insights, before they become commercially available to FieldView customers. Not only that, but we’re continually exploring the cutting edge in new partnerships and approaches to value on our research farms, operating primarily at five sites in the U.S. midwest. The testing done on these farms will unlock information key to delivering the next evolution in our platform.
Announced in July 2020, Bayer will begin rewarding farmers in Brazil and the U.S. for generating carbon credits by adopting climate-smart practices – such as no-till farming and the use of cover crops – designed to help agriculture reduce its carbon footprint and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Partnership with services provided by organizations like OpTIS will allow for Climate FieldView™ to play a significant role in ensuring farmer adoption and adherence to pilot requirements for cover crops and tillage.