Grid-tied
variable-rate fertility prescriptions
Member Profile
Grid-sampled soil tests. Variable-rate fertility tied to what the ground actually needs. A 144-page annual report that shows landowners exactly what happened on their acres.
The Challenge
A Western Illinois row crop farm operates across approximately 19 individually named landowner tracts. Managing those relationships well means more than good communication — it means being able to show each landowner exactly what is happening on their ground: what went in, what came out, and why the agronomic decisions were made the way they were.
For an operation managing this many landlord relationships, the standard approach of a verbal update or a basic yield summary isn’t enough. Landowners want evidence. And increasingly, they want to know their ground is being managed with precision and stewardship, not just efficiency.
What Field IQ Did
Field IQ built a complete precision agronomy program for this operation that was designed from the beginning with landowner transparency in mind. Every field was boundary-mapped, and soil sampling was conducted on a grid basis — creating a spatially accurate picture of what each tract actually needs agronomically, not what a field average would suggest.
Variable-rate fertility prescriptions were built directly from those grid soil tests, ensuring that fertilizer was applied where it was needed and at the rates the soil data supported — a level of documented stewardship most operations can’t easily demonstrate.
Field IQ also ran side-by-side variety trials across the operation’s fields, generating replicated agronomic data that could be reported back to the operator and, where relevant, to landowners as evidence of ongoing investment in the ground’s productivity.
At the end of each season, Field IQ produced a 144-page Landowner Report — a comprehensive, documented account of every field’s planting data, yield performance, soil management, and trial results, organized by landowner tract.
The Results
A documented record of precision stewardship for each landowner. Across approximately 19 named landowner tracts, every season’s activity is documented at the field level — what seeding rates went in, how yield compared to prior years, what the soil sampling showed, and how the fertility program responded to it. The Landowner Report puts all of that in one place, organized for a non-agronomist audience, with maps and clear summaries.
Fertility prescriptions built from grid-level soil data. Variable-rate fertility prescriptions on this operation are tied directly to grid soil tests, meaning rates are set by what the specific acres need — not by field averages or general agronomic guidelines. That precision reduces the risk of over-applying in strong areas and under-applying in weaker ones, and it creates the kind of paper trail that supports a long-term landowner relationship.
Trial data that demonstrates agronomic investment. Side-by-side variety comparisons run on this operation’s ground include a soybean trial where one variety outperformed another by 9.5 bu/ac with a 100% win rate on the tested field, and a second soybean comparison showing a 1.4 bu/ac advantage for the higher-performing variety. Every trial is documented and traceable. That evidence is what separates a farm that says it’s managing well from one that can prove it.