With agricultural production happening on such a large scale, you’d think it would be easier to see the big picture. But big data is a mountain of information too high for anyone to climb on their own. This is why Business Intelligence (BI) solutions exist to help you pull useful nuggets of information out of the vast landscape of your data. Here are a few tips for how the data at your fingertips can be used to optimize your entire business.

1. Keep a Weather Eye on the Horizon

There are multiple resources for tracking weather data–everything from temperature and rainfall to cloud coverage and storm tracking. You can download this information and visualize it alongside data about your crop yields. The BI software can then examine this data over the past several years, giving you evidence-based views of the potential effects of weather patterns on your overall productivity. Further, with predictive analysis capabilities, the software could even look ahead at prospective weather and determine how it will affect your crops.

2. Upgrade the Tractor

Modern tractors record an incredible volume of data at all times. Harvesting this data can be vital to your BI efforts, including determining if the type of tractor you’re using for a specific type of soil, landscape incline, or crop type is optimal. The speed at which it’s planting, the way it’s moving the soil, or even the pattern it’s moving in can all impact your yields in ways that seem subtle at first, but when extrapolated to your entire enterprise can have a startling effect.

3. Be Selective with Soil Types

The type of fertilizer you use and its nutrient density can have an incredible impact on your yield. By iteratively testing your nutrient type, levels, and density for each crop, and measuring how things like weather and landscape also affect yield, you can optimize your application of fertilizer for how much you want to produce — saving you from over fertilizing and wasting money. Learn more here. [link to Fertilizer blog]

4. Optimize Every Inch

There are other data points to consider when it comes to maximizing your yield, including the spacing between your crops. Normally this is an experience-based or haphazard exercise, but it doesn’t have to be with BI software. By comparing overall yield based on plant spacing via visual charts, you can see, on an easy-to-read graph, which length of spacing leads to the highest yield and most value for your business. Then you can set your tractors to match that distance accordingly.

5. Combine Forces

If you think that big data and BI software can have a positive impact on your agriculture business, you’re not the only one. Farmers all around the world are starting to recognize the power of data and the ways it can help them grow their business. And when more people invest in BI, more data can be shared. If you’re uncertain about how an upcoming weather pattern could affect your crops, you can look at data from a business that exists in a climate that deals with weather like that regularly. Or if you think that a new type of plant would do well in your region, you can look at what other farmers around you are doing and if they’re achieving success with plants like that. By sharing data, we can all work together to save money and time while increasing yields and profits.

Ready to get started? Reach out today to schedule a demo of Dyntell Bi, a cost-effective BI software solution that can help you learn how to improve your business with easy-to-use, visually engaging dashboards.