Agri ImaGIS (Fargo, ND) and Farm Market iD (Westmont, IL) last month announced a new initiative where the two companies would work together to combine Farm Market iD's comprehensive database of site-specific farm data with Agri ImaGIS's current and historical geospatial data and images associated with these sites. It is a profound combination of data that can provide important value-added data sets that heretofore have not been available to agri-marketers. AgEXEC sat down with Lanny Faleide (LF), CEO, Agri ImaGIS Technologies, and John Montandon (JM), co-founder and senior consultant with Farm Market iD, a Telematch Company, ahead of this week's InfoAg 2009 Conference in Springfield, IL (where Agri ImaGIS/SATSHOT is a Gold Sponsor and is talking to farmers and agri-marketers at its booth.)

JM: In 2008, Farm Market iD was in the fortunate position to secure the Common Land Unit (CLU) geospatial database from the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture]. This allowed us to add our aggregated Farm Market iD data to the the CLU geo-coding. And, for the first time, we now have the ability to map aggregated farm operations at the CLU level and understand all the cropping detail.

At that time, we didn't have the information internally to bring all these data to dimensional life and expand its value to the agribusiness community. After securing the CLU data, we immediately began our search for the best GIS [Geographic Information System] database developer we could find to bring on as a partner. During a six-month period, we interviewed a number of excellent firms whom we felt demonstrated the highest level of expertise necessary to accomplish the goal of bringing to market intelligent data products that we felt were most likely to fill the broadest needs.

Our final selection was Agri ImaGIS. We were convinced that Lanny Faleide and his team in Fargo had the infrastructure, the IT [information technology] expertise and the background in sophisticated GIS product development, plus years of presence in the ag market, to represent our very best choice. There is terrific synergy between our companies and teams such that we agreed to develop a joint venture and co-develop a series of market intelligence products that clients from both of our companies have been seeking.

Today, we are able to offer very exciting data and information enhancements for agri-marketers, as well as for farmers who are intensely involved with precision farming, and believe there´s much to come in the way of product development and channel marketing enhancements and solutions. We're very pleased to be in partnership with Agri ImaGIS.

LF: Since 1994, Agri ImaGIS has been creating new tools to access remote sensing and other GIS datsets for the ag industry, including the precision ag industry and the crop insurance industry. Agri ImaGIS has its roots in the geospatial industry and our tie to farmer databases has been limited. We are always looking for easier ways for users to access our services and datasets. When Farm Market iD approached us with the FSA grower database, we felt it was a key dataset when integrated with our geospatial SATSHOT tools, making a major leap in distributing real-time remote sensing crop information to the grower. This is revolutionary: the ability to search for any farm site in the USA, specific to crop year and CLU boundaries, cuts the time it takes to access such information from weeks to just seconds, while at the same delivering 100-percent accuracy of the USDA dataset. We are very excited to integrate our two companies´ capabilities. New ways of using these tools are coming to light in the ag industry all the time – and we expect with time, research and innovation, more will emerge.

JM: In the truest sense, marketers now have the ability to manage their grower-based markets from the top down, rather than the bottom up. By having access to the complete picture of aggregated farming operations – by being able to map the farming operation at the CLU level, and then applying key data image overlays, including soil type, growing degree days, just to name a few – a farm supplier is very prepared to make critical recommendations on behalf of their farmer customers. Decisions such as which seed corn variety is best suited for a particular geography is just one example of how the data can help provide optimal solutions to the decision-making process. We believe the GIS applications, backed by the Farm Market iD data, will revolutionize the way agri-marketers conduct business with their customers now and in the future.

LF: There are a number of ways ag suppliers can use the Farm Market iD/Agri ImaGIS SATSHOT combination. A number of suppliers and crop insurance companies have been interested in providing maps to their clients as growers. Many are doing this right now, but the resources to do this can be quite substantial and the accuracy of the data and the time it takes to create an accurate mapping product makes it very difficult for companies to do this well. With our new tools, we can literally create and print an automatic map booklet for a grower or a representative in minutes. Other uses allow ag supply companies to access any farm-site information geospatially along with weekly satellite imagery to determine vegetative growing conditions to evaluate crop conditions and determine if losses have occurred by weather conditions or application errors. Previously, this had been impractical at the grower level. . In the crop insurance industry, with permission, adjustors can instantly find a grower´s field, and analyze it for damage from a most recent vegetative image. These features open up endless possibilities for suppliers to help growers better manage their farm crops.

JM: Agri-marketers can access the GIS applications with Farm Market iD´s data under a single data license agreement. Each case is different in the scope of data access, so each client database will be customized to fit its exact requirements. A number of current Farm Market iD clients are preparing to license the GIS application as an add-on feature to the grower detail, which will become fairly common as we move forward. For those companies who are not currently accessing the grower data, such as some crop insurance companies, a single license agreement will cover the complete package, including the GIS application and imbedded farm site and grower detail.

LF: Currently in our SATSHOT imagery system, users such as suppliers, dealers, farmers or adjustors can now conduct aggregated searches by using the Farm Market iD database. These capabilities are already integrated into the SATSHOT subscription service along with satellite imagery analysis and mapping capabilities for $1 per year subscribed acre. Users can also elect to not use the database and find the fields directly. But the efficiency in using the Farm Market iD database pays for itself very quickly. Especially when a supplier has no idea where growers farm and how many acres each of them manages.

JM: The Farm Market iD database, which includes the grower and cropping detail, is updated annually. Normally, the updates each year are available in early summer – though this year, with our partnership, we are planning a late summer release. As a result, we will be able to provide 2009 crop and acre details deeper into this year´s calendar, along with the robust GIS expertise and data imagery files from Agri ImaGIS. Going forward, this partnership is going to open up a number of doors to farm and farming data never before available.

LF: Thanks to our relationship with Farm Market iD, one method that Agri ImaGIS is providing in updating the crop database is to use remote-sensed satellite imagery to update the crop type along with the vegetative condition of each CLU field boundary. Our SATSHOT servers allow almost real-time crop condition reports. By the 2010 season, thanks to innovations in satellite technology, we expect this to be a real– time offering – covering whole states in seconds allowing us to tie the Farm Market iD grower/CLU data directly to the condition of the crop -- and being able to give a report on each farm´s condition at that time stamp.

Thank you, gentlemen. Farm Market iD´s John Montandon can be reached at johnleemon@aol.com and Agri ImaGIS Technologies´ Lanny Faleide can be reached at lanny@satshot.com or at this week´s InfoAg 2009 Conferencein Springfield, IL.

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