With a new year just days away, GROWMARK officials are looking back on successes in 2020.
According to Lance Ruppert, director of agronomy marketing technology, GROWMARK?s AgValidity program made many strides this year. He says the program vetted dozens of products through hands-on testing at FS-branded locations through North America.
?2020 from an AgValidity standpoint, which is our testing program, we were testing new pre-commercial products and digital tools,? Ruppert said. ?We get infiltrated with a lot of new biologicals. It seems like that?s a hot market. We tried to figure out which biologicals may or may not work, and what?s the best placement for those biologicals. Things like that. We did quite a bit of work with those. I?d say we found that some are proving out to be a little better and more consistent than we had thought they might be.?
With new technology products from both legacy and startup companies bombarding the agricultural market every day, AgValidity was designed to focus on research and development to cut through the clutter and bring FS customers the best combination of personalized solutions.
?One product we tested did consistently seem to increase yield in corn and actually have lower moistures than the standard control protocol,? Ruppert said. ?That was interesting to see. Some of the other ones, we are diving into the data right now and deciphering where it did or didn?t work and why. It can kind of be a needle in the haystack to some degree, but we?re trying to sort through that.?
AgValidity worked with FS customers across the country on test trials, ranging in variety from bio stimulants and biologicals, to aerial technology to help growers analyze potential problem spots more efficiently.
For more information, visit growmarkfs.com.
