Future of Agriculture FoA 259: [Tech-Enabled Advisor Series] Shannon Winny, Owner and Senior Agronomist at GroWest Ag Ventures
Today’s episode is brought to you by FarmQA (www.FarmQA.com)
Today’s guest is Shannon Winny with GroWest Ag Ventures in Central Saskatchewan. She is a Professional Agronomist and a Certified Crop Advisor. About 18 months ago she decided to start her own company to meet the need for independent agronomy services in Saskatchewan.
Farming is a team sport. Certainly nobody shares the same risk profile as a farmer, but every successful farmer that I can think of has strong relationships with people like consultants, agronomists, farm marketers, other farmers, extension agents, researchers, and more. These trusted advisors often serve as the extension of that farm business and play critical roles in the decision-making.
These individuals are all too often overlooked by agtech companies and agribusinesses. So this summer I’m hosting a tech-enabled advisor series. One episode per month will be dedicated to featuring one of these trusted advisors to learn about their business, their tech stack, and how they view the future of agriculture as it pertains to the farmer customers in their area.
“I saw the fit that farms need a hundred percent unbiased, independent agronomy recommendations. It's really hard as the retail agronomist to maintain a hundred percent and be a hundred percent impartial when you know what's in the chem shed, how much margin you're making off specific products, stuff like that. So I decided to go the completely independent route.” - Shannon Winny
Shannon’s services are charged by the acre, sample or hour but because of her business model she is not beholden to quotas or specific products. This allows her to maintain an unbiased approach for producers that will provide them the best advice and benefits. She has circumvented the obstacle of producer adoption of different software by using the all inclusive, customizable, intuitive software from FarmQA. Farmers are able to see real time data and reports to monitor, save and analyze the data their operation provides.
“Agriculture is just changing so rapidly and we need to start really targeting specific zones and how to effectively manage those zones because land is expensive. We should manage the land that we have as efficiently and effectively as possible to be profitable.” - Shannon Winny
This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast:
- Meet Shannon Winny, an independent agronomy consultant with GroWest Ag Ventures in Central Saskatchewan
- Discover the advantages and benefits of the FarmQA technology she uses as an independent consultant
Thanks to FarmQA for sponsoring this episode. Make sure you go learn more about them at www.FarmQA.com and tell them thank you on Twitter @farm_qa.
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Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form.
Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com.
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