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144 on-farm trials. Clear results on fungicide, starter fertilizer, and biologicals — and the discipline to drop what didn’t pay.
The Challenge
Large row crop operations in Northwestern Illinois face a familiar pressure: every input product on the market comes with a promise, and the agronomic calendar doesn’t leave much time to separate the ones that earn their cost from the ones that don’t. For an operation running this many acres, even a $10 per acre difference in input performance adds up quickly.
This farm had been managing its data informally: tracking yields, running some planting records, but without a structured system for cleaning that data, running consistent trials, or connecting what went into the ground with what came off it. The operation enrolled in Field IQ: Full-Service to build that system from the ground up.
What Field IQ Did
Field IQ took on the full data program: cleaning and reconciling multiple seasons of yield monitor data, correcting for equipment calibration issues and boundary errors, and building a field-level database the farm could build on year over year. Over 109,000 erroneous data points were removed across the portfolio during this process, not because the data was bad farming, but because yield monitors generate noise, and that noise has to be filtered before it can be trusted.
With clean data in place, Field IQ designed and ran a structured trial program across the operation, testing products and practices in replicated side-by-side strips using the farm’s own equipment and field conditions. Variable-rate seeding prescriptions were also developed and deployed across more than 80 fields.
Every result was analyzed and reported directly to the operator — including the ones that showed a product wasn’t paying back.
The Results
Fungicide application delivered a documented 41.9 bu/ac advantage. A replicated two-strip trial comparing a fungicide application to an untreated check showed a 41.9 bu/ac corn yield advantage for the treated strips, with a 100% win rate. That result, verified on this farm’s ground, provided the agronomic and economic justification to maintain the practice. Field IQ reported the result and the supporting data.
Starter fertilizer showed a meaningful positive effect. A starter fertilizer trial returned a 10.9 bu/ac corn yield advantage over the untreated check — a directional result with enough signal to warrant continued use and expanded testing. Field IQ flagged it as a single-strip result and recommended replication to confirm before committing it whole-farm.
A biological product was tested, failed to perform, and was dropped. A bio-stimulant product marketed as a yield enhancer was run through a side-by-side trial on this operation. The result: the untreated check outperformed the treated strips by $37.32 per acre. Field IQ reported the result plainly and recommended discontinuing the product. The farm acted on it. This is precisely what the trial program is designed to do — not to confirm what a salesperson says, but to find out what the farm’s own fields say.
Variable-rate seeding adopted at scale. Based on the farm’s own cleaned, multi-year data and field zone analysis, variable-rate seeding prescriptions were built and deployed across more than 80 fields per year in both 2023 and 2024. That’s 80+ prescription files per season — each one built from this operation’s data, not a template.