Member Profile
How data from a farm’s own fields drove down seed costs, identified the highest-paying hybrids, and cut inputs that didn’t earn their keep.
The Challenge
A corn and soybean farm in Central Tennessee had been planting flat seeding rates for years — a common approach that treats every acre the same regardless of what the data says. Like most farms of its size, the operation was also investing in input products each season without a systematic way to test whether those products were actually paying back. The data existed. The field records were there. But no one had a process to clean it, analyze it, and turn it into prescriptions the operator could actually use.
When the operation enrolled in Field IQ: Full-Service, the goal was straightforward: put the farm’s own data to work, identify what was earning its cost and what wasn’t, and make decisions based on what happened on that farm’s ground — not a regional average or a sales representative’s recommendation.
What Field IQ Did
Field IQ built a complete multi-year data program from the ground up for this operation. Every season of yield data was cleaned and reconciled — correcting flow-delay errors, removing bad points from start/stop transitions and short rows, and aligning planting, application, and harvest layers to the same field locations. That foundation made every analysis and prescription that followed trustworthy.
With clean data in place, Field IQ developed variable-rate seeding prescriptions for both corn and soybeans, calibrated to this farm’s specific field zones. Simultaneously, a structured on-farm trial program was built and run across the operation — testing varieties, tillage practices, application timing, and input products in replicated side-by-side strips using the farm’s own equipment.
Results from each trial fed directly back into the next season’s prescriptions. And when a trial said something didn’t pay, Field IQ said so clearly — and recommended dropping it.
The Results
The outcomes here span several years of a data-driven program. Each result is traceable to a specific trial or prescription file from this operation.
Seed costs are reduced through right-sized variable-rate prescriptions. Before variable-rate planting, corn was going in at approximately 32,000 seeds per acre and soybeans at 140,000 seeds per acre. Field IQ’s prescriptions brought those averages to roughly 30,150 corn and 108,600 soybeans — placing seed by zone and eliminating the flat-rate overage. The soybean reduction alone saves approximately $16 per acre in seed cost. Corn trimmed roughly $7 per acre on top of better zone placement. Across 2024–26, these prescriptions covered 134 fields.
Proven hybrid advantage worth $40–60 per acre. Replicated variety trials on this farm’s ground identified the highest-returning hybrids with enough statistical confidence to act on. In one corn comparison across 46 strips on 6 fields, one hybrid outperformed the other by $58.72 per acre and won 89% of head-to-head strips. A second comparison across 52 strips showed a $43.87 per acre advantage at an 85% win rate. Those are not small differences — and they were confirmed on this farm’s soil, not a research station.
Management practice decisions backed by data. A six-trial summary on deep tillage showed a net savings of $18.99 per acre by skipping it — no yield loss, just cost eliminated. An in-furrow application study, by contrast, showed a $18.85 per acre gain and was continued. Every recommendation was grounded in what the data said, not what a product brochure claimed.
Honesty when something worked — and honesty when it didn’t. A seed treatment product showed a $63.38 per acre gain on one specific field in 2021 — a real, documented result that was reported as such. In other fields, it didn’t hold. Field IQ reported both directions. A liquid starter product, tested separately, lost up to $43 per acre and was recommended for discontinuation. The program is designed to find what works on this farm. When something doesn’t, it gets cut.