Sharing and connecting virtually from the field — a LIVE! Q & A with Denise Hockaday

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In the broad category of precision agriculture, Climate FieldView is one of the main platforms available. In this RealAg LIVE!, host Shaun Haney speaks with Denise Hockaday, climate lead from FieldView Canada, about the software that allows farmers to analyze their farm data virtually anywhere with the handy Climate FieldView app.

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Summary

  • Denise’s background: dairy farm, everybody worked, lots of good, grounding experiences; off-farm work experiences during high school exposed Denise to lots of small business situations
  • Technology has advanced so far; milking cows and looking after things compared to the technology available today; unique experience in her generation, writing code for the first family computer, floppy disks, original SimCity, watched it evolve.
  • Autonomous tractors, robotics in the field? Dairy farmers have led the technology charge in Canada, AI, appearance tech to be able to recognize cows
  • Prior experience as a Dekalb lead in Canada to being the Climate lead? Lots of similarities and differences, Denise has been fortunate to participate in biotech and seed product launches in the past; tech outcome is more nuanced than an physical product; the outcome is an answer you might not have been thinking about; might take longer to discover the benefits of the tech
  • As consumers, we’ve been trained to expect how a piece of tech might work, which can lead to targeted ways to show consumers how a product works;
  • Usability: has to be balanced — user feedback and a lot of collaboration with customers is high on the priority list at FieldView
  • The priorities: bringing value in partnership with a global team, these could be companies with a specialty area, visible and variable
  • Over 65 global partners, many relevant in Canada, sharing feature is enabled in the platform, under control of the farmer
  • Sharing can be done through a portal in FieldView, type in email address: a farm, a field, performance information, you choose what gets shared. An ag retailer, as an example, can also upload information for the producer
  • Not everyone “has the same security clearance” or can access all the information
  • That same information can be shared between farm stakeholders but also transferred down to the next generation
  • Of the utmost importance, producers own their data, they’re in complete control of what gets shared. If you no longer want to use the platform, the data can be transferred
  • No platform partnership with TikTok, Shaun
  • Soil variability: if it’s in a format that can be brought in, the software can use it in the yield prediction
  • Technology from satellite perspective is constantly improving — higher resolution means more information, but can’t always get great imagery if the satellite passes over at night or when there’s cloud cover
  • Satellite or drones…both are good
  • Sharing: on farm team, on-farm agronomist, finance partner, prospective buyer of specialty crops
  • Traceability? More so a basic understanding that end-product consumers want to know how their food was produced, so potentially going in the direction of being able to find that information
  • Export data! Maybe there isn’t a platform partnership yet with your crop insurance provider, but the info can be exported very quickly to a pdf version
  • Canada has been quick to adopt technology; not so much about comparing crops but how the farm operates, similar to that of Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina, this tech is good for all types of farm operations
  • Vineyards? A lot of them are using technology, FieldView components can be used but not all features transfer over
  • Cab Chats series helps FieldView users and specialists connect virtually

 

 

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RealAg LIVE! (view all)Season 1 (2020) Episode 70
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