Podcast Episode 152

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Stacking farm data to find your best tile ROI

Stacking farm data to find your best tile ROI

Episode 152 | 30 min

With Guests:

Carter Quam, Sales and Support of Terrain
Mike Tveten, Leadership Team of Terrain
Trey Allis, Application Engineer of Prinsco

When the developers of ag precision software TerrainIQ asked agronomists what farmers need to be successful, every one of them said the same thing: nothing works without water management. Yet water analysis is the one piece most farm data tools leave out. Carter Quam and Mike Tveten join host Trey Allis to share what their company, Terrain, has learned since those early days and why the current version of their software compiles land, water, tile, and yield data all in one place.

Carter and Mike explain how the TerrainIQ platform uses public data to help farmers and landowners understand field performance, identify areas that can be improved, and make smart investment decisions. They dive into the ROI of tiling and talk about why the best return usually comes from productive ground that stays wet. They also offer advice on spotting undersized mains and failing tile, digitizing hand-drawn tile maps, sharing data with your tile contractor or agronomist, and how their tool takes the guesswork out of agriculture water management.

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There's a thousand different softwares that you can track yield, prescription for nutrients, everything in the agronomy aspect, and usually it's leaving out water management and the big variable of Mother Nature.

— Carter Quam, Sales and Support, Terrain

Guest Bios

Carter Quam

Carter Quam is in sales and support at Terrain, a land intelligence and water management company. He works with farmers, landowners, and ag professionals across the country, walking them through TerrainIQ, a platform that stacks soil, topography, rainfall, yield, and tile map data in one place. Carter helps farmers organize the data they already have so they can see what’s limiting yield, acre by acre.

Mike Tveten

Mike Tveten, a member of the leadership team at Terrain, was part of the team that spent more than five years developing TerrainIQ, which grew from a tile ROI tool into a decision-making platform for farmers. Mike’s goal is to put decision-making power back in the landowner’s hands.

Trey Allis

Trey graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. He joined the Prinsco team as an Application Engineer in 2017 and primarily focuses on Agricultural engineering. Growing up on a farm and in the Ag community, Trey has spent a lot of his career focusing on the Flexible Dual Wall product and the value it adds to the industry. He is passionate about education and bridging the gap between research and application.

Carter Quam (00:00):

Usually it’s leaving out your water management and the big variable of the mother nature.

Mike Tveten (00:04):

Nothing we do works without your water being managed first.

Carter Quam (00:08):

You pull up a one farm, in a minute you could have all that information at the tip of your fingers.

Mike Tveten (00:14):

It’s putting the power of the decision making back in the landowner’s hands.

Trey Allis (00:22):

Welcome back to The Water Table. Trey Allis here today, joined by Mike Tveten and Carter Quam with Terrain. And [00:00:30] I guess that we’ll get into a lot of what Terrain is and how it’s used and whatnot, but I guess the way that we look at it or the way that I’ve seen and that you guys laid out for us is kind of a software system and a company built on bringing more data to growers, farmers, landowners type stuff, and bringing in a lot of different sources into one area to make a lot more data-driven decisions. So with [00:01:00] that, want to thank you guys for coming in here and being able to make this work and show off what you guys are all working on here the last handful of months and I guess years too with Terrain.

Mike Tveten (01:12):

Yeah, thanks Trey. We appreciate the opportunity to be on this with you guys.

Trey Allis (01:15):

Yeah. So I guess maybe give us a little bit of background for what Terrain is and the evolution on where you guys or how you got to today with some of this software and then the company that you guys have.

Mike Tveten (01:28):

Sure. I can take that one. [00:01:30] Terrain is a vision that we’ve been looking at for a long time. Probably in the last five years we’ve looked at the need in the ag industry for growers to have the ability to make their own decisions, stack up their data and especially deal with their water. Right now there’s not a lot of products out there that help them do that. So we started out trying to understand the return on investment for water management and getting their [00:02:00] water taken care of. That’s really where Terrain started. It’s grown into a lot more than that. We have the TerrainIQ software, which has morphed from a drainage ROI tool to really a decision making platform for growers. We have our engineering services focusing on drain tile design and then also our products division that is primarily agricultural lift stations and remote monitoring.

Trey Allis (02:29):

Yeah. [00:02:30] And digging into some of the on the software side, so that’s TerrainIQ is what it’s called, right? Yep. And the way that I’ve said it for a long time is precision is everywhere in agriculture from planting and fertilizer applications and you can get real in depth with whatever topography and some soils and things like that. Water has been excluded for a long time or hasn’t really been built into that. And like you said, with having that resource for figuring out what you are doing with your water. [00:03:00] And then now this is what TerrainIQ is building in and adding more of that base to that data set. Is that right?

Carter Quam (03:07):

Yeah. I mean that’s exactly it. There’s a thousand different softwares that you can track yield, prescription for nutrients, everything in the agronomy aspect. And usually it’s leaving out your water management and the big variable of the mother nature. Usually rainfall is not tracked historically or even looked at of year to year how it impacts your yield and stuff like [00:03:30] that. So being able to take in that public data, like you said, with the soils and the natural drainage characteristics along with the yield data, soil sample data that we’re bringing in, tile maps, things like that, we can actually just start organizing where your data’s at, looking at different variables and how it’s impacting your yield acre by acre.

Mike Tveten (03:48):

Yeah. And I think another thing to add on to that is as we were working on this software, we were meeting with agronomists, every one of them said the same thing. Nothing we do works without your water being managed first, [00:04:00] but there was no tool out there to show the grower what they needed to do and how that could impact their operation.

Trey Allis (04:07):

Yeah. And even if that information’s out there, it’s spread out through, thinking back through stuff on our farm, it’s hand-drawn tile maps and then going through say Web Soil Survey to find out what’s drainage classes of the different soils that are out there and productivity index and things like that. And also, well, then topography has a layer in there, has a play with how all of this stuff interacts. [00:04:30] So then yeah, you can have your yield data and you can maybe overlay that with some tile maps a little bit, but actually figuring out how these other factors play in there too. And maybe just walk through a little bit of some of the features with TerrainIQ. I know you guys, we sat down and did a little demo here a week or two ago, but some of those overlays, some of those maps that are out there and some of the features in that, can you walk through what this software looks like?

Carter Quam (04:58):

Yeah, so it’s basically, like [00:05:00] we’ve been saying, pulling public data and we’re not creating any new data or reinventing the wheel of any sorts. We’re just pulling in the National Soil Survey for soil data. We pulled that out and made a drainage classification map for the naturally drain characteristics of each soil type to show. We created a formulation to help prioritize investment and show the farmers correct places to invest their money [00:05:30] based on productivity and that natural drainage characteristics. Like you said, topography using LiDAR data. We’ve created rainfall maps using that topography data to show flow lines, things like that. And then taking data from John Deere ops or even shapefiles, importing those in along with PDFs, shapefiles for tile maps. So basically, like I said, we’re just taking your data you already have and giving you a spot to put it where you can start overlaying and correlating.

(05:58):

Because like you said, [00:06:00] everyone gives you a PDF for your software and you’re looking at a thousand different things trying to correlate what actually is happening on this specific spot. Well, now you can take it, stack each of these layers on top of each other and start looking at this exact spot in the field is getting less yield because of this reason and start actually analyzing why in the farm.

Trey Allis (06:19):

Talk to me a little bit about that index, and I forget exactly what it’s called, but overlaying that crop productivity with drainage class. Is that right?

Carter Quam (06:27):

Yeah, so it’s called tile drainage index, [00:06:30] and that’s exactly what it is. It’s taking your productivity with that natural drainage characteristic broken down in percentage of acres, and both weigh equally on each other. And it’s basically showing you where your most productive farms are at if that water management is what’s limiting factor on that farm. So it’s a score of 100 to zero. The closer to 100 is the more beneficial farm to install a drain and put a water management plan together on that farm [00:07:00] and invest your money into that farm.

Trey Allis (07:02):

And that’s all laid out by looking at an individual field, laid out by soil types, so you can get that essentially heat map in there of where your money is going to be the best deployed for those resources. And thinking through that, it’s essentially the poorly drained soils that are highly productive.

Carter Quam (07:21):

Exactly.

Trey Allis (07:22):

That’s where you’re going to get the most ROI. And I’m sure there’s been a whole bunch of people, I guess maybe not the most hard set data on it, [00:07:30] but three to five year payoff time. But that depends on essentially this factor of what you’re saying is how beneficial is that tile going to be within these productive soils?

Carter Quam (07:41):

Yeah, because you might have farms that are poorly drained but have a low CPI, so they’re not even going to produce it either way. We’re going to have farms that are in the 90 CPIs and they’re very productive farms, but are horribly… Their major limiting factor is that water management piece of it’s poorly drained soils or different soil [00:08:00] types, even the muck or stuff like that that we looked at.

Mike Tveten (08:03):

Yeah, and we do have a calculator built into the software where you can take those farms and actually run scenarios on what potential drainage improvements may cost, which ultimately will give you an ROI tailored to your operation.

Carter Quam (08:17):

And that’s more the farm by farm aspect where you’re looking at specific farms of give you a rough estimate number for what a plan would cost you or what investment would cost you on that farm.

Mike Tveten (08:29):

Yeah. The [00:08:30] other thing that outside of the mapping tools, we do have a, we call it a portfolio view where you can see your entire farming operation in one view and use that to prioritize and sort your farms to essentially bring your water management investments to an annual basis and start to prioritize those farms, get designs on those farms and work on improving them, your best farms first.

Trey Allis (08:56):

Yeah, exactly. And that’s something that we’ve been saying here for a little while and that I’ve really been [00:09:00] pushing out, talking with at different conferences or with contractors and things like that is making sure they have that plan. It might not make sense to just go into a field that you think is a little bit wet and split all the laterals. Maybe that’s the move, but also having more of that data to back up. Okay, maybe that works this year, but what else could you be doing is that main improvements on some other farms we can through some of this data, you can pick out where those inefficiencies [00:09:30] are specifically related to water and how to, again, put the money in the best spots.

Carter Quam (09:36):

Yeah, not only that too, I guess with TerrainIQ, and we’ve looked at it too, is you can start doing analysis of, we’ve talked about undersized mains and tile breaks and stuff like that. And when you have that yield stacked with tile, you can start identifying is my main undersized and it’s not only a tool for identifying adding tile, but it’s also looking at your old tile and seeing if your existing tile is [00:10:00] still performing to its most efficiency. So just checking if your mains are undersized, if you have breaks in certain areas that are ponding and stuff like that.

Trey Allis (10:11):

Yeah, and that was something that you guys brought up in the demo of a case study or an example of what we’re talking about is had a field that was in “patterned out” and it did have a pattern tile system in there, split some laterals and some spots, but then also found some of those main [00:10:30] inefficiencies we’ll call them. But can you walk through some of that stuff of what the software was able to do in that scenario?

Mike Tveten (10:37):

Sure. Yeah, this was a farm that was, to your earlier point “pattern tiled” back in the ’70s on a very wide spacing. The landowner had contacted a local drainage installer to put some splitters in and circled some areas on an FSA map and areas they felt were underperforming. We were lucky enough [00:11:00] to get all that data in early on in the development of the software and we started doing some analysis on it and there were a few things that really came to light. First off, a farm that was considered pattern tiled, the average yield across that farm increased by over 30 bushels just by putting in additional tile in between the existing concrete tile. So that was a big eye-opener for us. I mean, there was still that much yield potential in that farm even after it was [00:11:30] pattern tiled. Another thing we noticed analyzing the yield post splitter installation was they didn’t put enough in.

(11:39):

There were areas where they had stopped splitting where we could see a yield decrease immediately adjacent to those splitter lines. So prior to having TerrainIQ, we couldn’t see that. Everything was done in the field, best guess, looking at field conditions and what the landowner had circled [00:12:00] on an FSA map. So pretty rudimentary and rough. So we could see that really clear. And the last thing was post-installation, we noticed yield decreases along the existing tile mains, and that was odd to us. So we were fortunate enough this grower had yield data back, oh, I think almost 10 years. So we were able to look at historical yields, and then with our rainfall tool, [00:12:30] we could compare that against rainfall.

(12:31):

And what we noticed is in dry years, the yield was higher over this main than it was in wet years. Seemed counterintuitive. Upon further investigation, we actually found out that the existing main was collapsed, so it was actually irrigating that ground. So in dry years, the yield went up, in wet years it went down, and we were able to identify that and fix it. So that was one farm we learned a ton just by having the ability to stack that [00:13:00] data and start to compare and look.

Carter Quam (13:02):

And with that farm too now, now that you got that water managed, what we would say correctly now, the aspect of what the portfolio that Mike was talking about, you can look at county averages that we’ve built in there along with your yield and see where your farm’s stacking up. And that farm even now today is still seven bushels under county average. So it’s like with a farm that productive, now we can start adding the soil sample data in that further layer of analysis after you [00:13:30] get your water managed. Now you can have you or your agronomist look at it and start understanding what nutrients might be deficient in that area, that farm to help bring it above or to county average at least.

Trey Allis (13:42):

Yeah. And I guess maybe something I should have asked here early on, but when did Terrain launch the company or the software?

Mike Tveten (13:48):

Yeah, officially we launched in June at the Cultivate Conference up in North Dakota at the Grand Farm, but we’ve been working on the software itself for at least five years.

Trey Allis (14:00):

[00:14:00] Yeah, but still fairly new rolling out, a little more public facing and things like that. We’ve been talking a lot about farmers, growers with that aspect of it, but who else is going to be or can be interested in some of this stuff or things that you found with rolling out at more trade shows and things like that?

Mike Tveten (14:19):

Sure. I think just with the ability to put all that data in one spot, we’ve noticed land managers, real estate people, investors are really interested in the software. It allows [00:14:30] them to take a look at the piece of ground really quick and gather up a lot of detailed information on that farm with basically one click. We’ve obviously had agronomists interested. Drainage contractors have shown an interest probably for their customers as much as for themselves, getting their customers in there. We do have a feature where landowners and growers can add partners onto their subscription at no cost. So we [00:15:00] see once a grower gets in here and gets all their land in there and starts making some decisions, them wanting to bring in their drainage contractor or their crop consultant. So definitely targeted towards growers, but benefited for a lot of other people in that ag space.

Carter Quam (15:18):

Yeah. And for the land side, I guess too is similar to what the growers are looking at with the soils and stuff like that, the investors and brokers were already doing the same thing, but they had to go to all these different sites [00:15:30] to try to find the information they’re looking for now. And with TerrainIQ, you can just have all that information, pull up a one farm, in a minute you could have all that information at the tip of your fingers.

Trey Allis (15:40):

Yep. And always adding in more layers of that stuff like you said, there’s a lot of base data that’s out there, but then adding in the tile maps in here, nutrient plan, things like that too. And that was something that I was thinking about when we were going through that demo as well is when you do start layering in a lot of this stuff, it is going to take a little more [00:16:00] deciphering on what is all going on there. Again, you can find a red spot in the yield map, could be a handful of different contributing factors there too where it’s a cool thing or a feature to add on there of grower looking at this like, “Okay, yep, I think this is a drainage issue,” say, get that in front of a tile contractor and say, “Hey, what do you think is going on here? What can I be doing with this?” And go through those options to, again, more data for everybody is going to help make those decisions a lot better.

Carter Quam (16:29):

Yeah, with the [00:16:30] team function, you can get it in front of whatever consultant you use, whether it’s a crop consultant, agronomist, drainage contractor, you can get it in their hands however you want, just give them the data and the visibility too to see where your issues or where you’re concerned about too, and they can start giving you their analysis of what they think would fix that problem too.

Trey Allis (16:52):

But ultimately all of that, for the most part, all of that is owned by the landowner and the farmer that has that information.

Carter Quam (16:58):

Yup. Whatever is in [00:17:00] their account, they’re the only ones that can see it until they would invite that other person and then they can restrict access. So the agronomist or whoever you invite, you can restrict their access to where they’re not going to be able to delete farms or add anything and they’re just going to be able to view it. That’s all they can do. But yeah, it’s up to the account owner’s discretion of how much permission you want to give another person and it’s all your own information that you’re going to see.

Trey Allis (17:27):

I guess one other thing that I wanted to maybe get [00:17:30] your guys’ thoughts on is, and we were just out here, a drainage conference here a couple weeks ago, and a question I get asked a lot is what’s the right tile depth and spacing for whatever, my farm, not necessarily for the soil type or for this KSAT value, things like that. And relying on, “Well, what are the universities saying for this information on these soils or this area?” Things like that. With building this in a little bit more, [00:18:00] that puts either that ownership more so that power on that landowner to have all that data there to essentially do their own studies is if they know their spacings and their depths across their fields, they have all of their yield data, they can figure out what’s going on on their operations to fine tune all that stuff a lot more.

Mike Tveten (18:19):

Yeah, exactly. That was one thing, probably an indirect benefit we figured out as this thing evolved is landowners have a lot of people giving them advice and a lot of times [00:18:30] that comes with a price sheet right behind that advice and we’re not doing that. We’re offering a software platform for them to make their own decision based on their own data and their choice to share with whoever they feel like they want to share with. But ultimately it is, it’s putting the power of the decision making back in the landowner’s hands.

Trey Allis (18:49):

Yeah, and giving them, again, all that power, all that information. It probably can be daunting at sometimes, but at least having that all in one place and the interface on that that [00:19:00] we’ve seen that we walk through is pretty slick, pretty user-friendly to toggle all that stuff around and keep that managed. And like you were saying earlier, is put that plan together for what’s going on on your farm as a whole, not just on little wet spots in your field here and there.

Carter Quam (19:17):

Yeah, and I think from the interface side, we were saying it’s simple, that’s what we were going for is to be simple because on the farmer side, they have so many tools where you have to try to learn whether it’s your combine planner, you have to try [00:19:30] to remember how to run these things where we were trying to make it as simple as possible where you could use it in July and then come January you remember how to use it just because it’s simple enough to click a button here, click a button there and find out how to run your way around it, not have to try to remember another complicated system to run.

Trey Allis (19:47):

Yeah, pretty straightforward. Do you have any other examples, case studies on interesting interactions that you’ve had again rolling this out here the last few years, a handful of months too?

Mike Tveten (19:59):

Yeah, I mean [00:20:00] the first one for us was the soil sample stuff. We hadn’t though of that being more drainage focused people. We rolled this thing out and instantly the first four people we talked to was, “Why can’t we put our soil samples in here?” Because we know we need water management, but as soon as that’s done, we want to start analyzing our soil sample data. So that’s coming. We’re testing it right now. It’ll be in the software here in the next week or so, and that’s pretty eye-opening to us once you start [00:20:30] laying soil sample data over the top of everything else we already have.

Carter Quam (20:34):

Yeah, and it helps complete the whole story of a single farm. We’re going to have the soils aspect in there from just the soil type, just the classification on the basics. We’ll have your yield data, and now we’re in the nutrients part, just to complete the whole agronomy story of that specific farm.

Mike Tveten (20:53):

Yeah, we’ve met a lot of great people here in the short amount of time we’ve been out. Everybody’s unique, [00:21:00] and that’s one thing with the software, people can use it the way they want to use it. There’s not one way to use it. And we have countless stories about how different people are going to use this as this thing rolled out. I think that’s probably the most eye-opening to us is we released this thinking it was going to do a couple things and it’s going to do a lot more than that. So it’s been kind of fun to see.

Trey Allis (21:22):

And as far as geography of where it’s useful where you have all that data, is it just in the Midwest? Is it full [00:21:30] US, North America? What does that look like now or maybe what does that look like moving forward too?

Carter Quam (21:35):

Yeah, as far as the software goes, we have soil data everywhere in the US right now. Wherever that soil survey, they went and pulled, that’s the information we have. So as far as the software goes, it’s completely the US. Anyone that’s interested can sign up, create their own account and start importing their data and playing around with it.

Mike Tveten (21:57):

Yeah, and obviously you guys have some people up in [00:22:00] Canada that are probably listening as well. We do have the ability to import data, so just because it’s not on those base layers does not mean we can’t put it into the software. So we’ve had some guys with some one-off stuff that have asked us already, “Can you put this in here?” And we can. It’s more hands-on to do that, but we have the ability to do that as well.

Trey Allis (22:23):

Yeah, sure thing. And maybe that’s for, I don’t know if we have many listeners from too much outside of the country, but I think I’ve seen some reports [00:22:30] on maybe Australia, and I think we got some emails in from Latvia and things like that too.

Carter Quam (22:35):

We actually had a surprise. We were out down at the Farm Progress Show a couple weeks ago here, and we had a surprising amount of interest from the South American group down there. Yeah, it was actually pretty eye-opening, the amount of people that are coming through and like, “Oh, we got water management issues too.” So it’s a nationwide thing or worldwide.

Trey Allis (22:55):

Global, yeah.

Carter Quam (22:55):

Yeah, global.

Trey Allis (22:56):

Yeah, same issue all in different spots.

Carter Quam (22:58):

Exactly.

Trey Allis (22:59):

And like you’re [00:23:00] saying, all unique characteristics and factors that are in there too, and that’s the cool thing with this on making that for the site, the land itself, and not just a general thing for a, say, soil type, a county, things like that. So yeah, looking at, if people want to take the next step with you guys, how do they reach out to you? What’s the best route to go with that to get their eyes on some of this stuff, maybe set up a [00:23:30] demo?

Carter Quam (23:30):

Yeah, the best way to do that would be to go to our website. It’s terrainwater.com. There’s a orange button at the top you click, book a demo, and then it comes to me and we can get in contact with you whether it’s virtually or onsite, depending on where you’re at in the world. And we book a demo through there, walk you through like we did with you last week, show you the basic walkthrough of the program and software and how you can use it and different things. And then from there, you [00:24:00] sign up and start onboarding data and any questions or anything like that, email or call and we can help you walk through the different questions you might have.

Mike Tveten (24:09):

Yeah, and the demo’s great. We’ve got some videos on our YouTube channel as well for people to go look at. It really gets powerful when you start looking at your own farms. I think you noticed that we went right to your farms. Every demo we do, we start showing them some of the base data we have and it instantly goes right to their farms and they start looking at their stuff. So [00:24:30] I’d highly encourage everybody to just get in touch with us, take a look at it. We’d love to show you, get you onboarded and get you going.

Trey Allis (24:39):

Yep. And that’s, like you said, with more data and more information, it’s fun. You can definitely get down in a rabbit hole on it. And didn’t mention this on the start, but I had a similar idea on this stuff and what I’ve actually been doing is just overlaying screenshots from LiDAR or hey, whatever, Google has really good imagery in this year and bringing that in and then, oh yeah, [00:25:00] there’s hand-drawn tile maps that are on it too, and laying out all that stuff in CAD, which gets very tedious. But essentially having that software now to be able to put all that stuff together can help, again, make those decisions a lot easier, more data.

Carter Quam (25:15):

It’s more tedious too. I mean, it took you hours probably to screenshot, throw it on CAD, get them all lined up nice. So that’s where it really, like you said, it becomes powerful when you can just start clicking buttons to turn on the different layers to overlay and transparency so you can start seeing data [00:25:30] behind each other and how it correlates to each other.

Mike Tveten (25:32):

Yeah. And you mentioned your hand-drawn tile maps, so we didn’t really touch on that, but that is part of the software. We will get those hand-drawn maps digitized in and get them overlaid so they’re digital as well as store them within the software. So for those of you that are saying they don’t need the yield analysis stuff, this is an online tile map storage software as well.

Carter Quam (25:54):

And also iOS too through the app. That’s the benefit we’ve seen is-

Mike Tveten (25:59):

On the App Store as well.

Carter Quam (25:59):

If [00:26:00] you’re out locating tile, fixing tile, you can have it on your phone and have the lines show up right on your phone. So you’re not looking at a map trying to find out where you’re at in the world. It’s right there on your phone.

Trey Allis (26:09):

It may be an impossible question off of that one with the hand-drawn tile maps, how do you make sure they’re accurate or scaled right? I mean, it’s all going to be a little bit of guessing, the certain color that’s out there of may or may not be here.

Mike Tveten (26:22):

Not all maps are created equal, let’s say that. Yeah, the best we can working with the landowner to make sure [00:26:30] things look relatively close.

Carter Quam (26:32):

Yep. And using aerial imagery too to see where we think it’s going to line up at too.

Trey Allis (26:37):

Maybe you can still have that note that’s maybe drawn on there too.

Carter Quam (26:40):

Exactly.

Trey Allis (26:40):

40 steps from the barn that isn’t there anymore.

Carter Quam (26:43):

Exactly.

Trey Allis (26:44):

Yeah. Goes around hill and seen a lot of fun stuff that way.

Carter Quam (26:49):

And that’s a big thing too for us is we’re trying to not eliminate, but reduce that because we’ve talked a lot of tile maps, a lot of time get put in the storage cabinet and [00:27:00] never get found again. And so you have a conversation with a grower and they’re like, “Oh yeah, we had a map, but I had no idea where that’s at anymore.” So it’s kind of help trying to eliminate that process of now you know exactly where it’s at. There’s a feature on the tile map where you can click and get your hard copy one back if you ever had to bring it somewhere, you can print it off or have it pulled out from Terrain too.

Trey Allis (27:23):

Right on. Is there anything else that you guys want to tell about Terrain or software company, stuff like [00:27:30] that for wrap up?

Carter Quam (27:32):

Yeah, I think we mentioned the engineering side and we can actually order tile designs through the software once you go through the ROI process at the final step of that is if you saw that and it’s a number you think you’re interested in investing in that land, you can actually order a tile plan from Terrain. I think Mike mentioned earlier too, we have the lift stations and remote monitoring. So remote monitoring will be through the software for all pumps and really anything you want to monitor on [00:28:00] your farm we’ll be offering through the software on our monitor page, which runs through the app on the iOS phone too. So that’s one of the main benefits we’ve seen for remote monitoring for guys with pumps is you could be on your couch and see exactly what’s happening with your pump. If it’s running, if it’s not, what level is the tank at, flow. So it’s just a powerful tool for the remote monitoring side too.

Mike Tveten (28:21):

Yeah, I think that covers it. Like I said, the engineering, the remote monitoring, we do have a full pump shop up Fargo, so retail sales, [00:28:30] if you need pump parts, anything like that, you can just stop in. We’ll have our address on the card at the end.

Trey Allis (28:36):

Awesome. Well, really appreciate you guys’ time coming in here today and making this work, sit down for a little chat and telling us more of the precision that’s coming within agriculture and specifically within agriculture water, which I think is going to be a game changer, something that’s been needed for a while in our industry. And it’s good to talk through some of the stuff and to get more of this rolled out and [00:29:00] hopefully can see where it goes. Maybe guys get you back on here another year or two and see what else you’ve all added into it as well.

Carter Quam (29:07):

Yeah, because it’s been six months and we’ve added soil sample data, so who knows what else is coming in the next six months too from the data side, what we’ll else be adding.

Mike Tveten (29:14):

Yeah, no, and we appreciate the opportunity. We’re pretty excited, so it was nice to get on here and talk about it.

Trey Allis (29:20):

Awesome. Well, appreciate it guys.

Carter Quam (29:21):

Yeah, thanks Trey.

Mike Tveten (29:22):

Thank you.

Podcast Episode 152

Stacking farm data to find your best tile ROI

Episode 152 | 30 min

With Guests:

Listen Now

Guest Bios

Carter Quam

Mike Tveten

Trey Allis

Transcript

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Podcast Episode 152

Stacking farm data to find your best tile ROI

Episode 152 | 30 min

With Guests:

Listen Now

Also Available On

Guest Bios

Carter Quam

Mike Tveten

Trey Allis

Transcript

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