Ever wonder how your farm measures up? It can be hard to know if you’re getting the most out of every acre just using your own records.
You might compare results on your farm to what you’ve seen before — how much nitrogen you used last year compared to this year, for example, or which hybrid worked on these acres but not those — but at the end of the day, you don’t know what you don’t know.
What if you could see how your fields actually compare to those of other farms across your region, state/province or even the whole country? How would being able to more accurately assess this year’s practices inform your plans for next year?
FBN® Benchmarking can help with that.
Available when you sign up for a free FBN membership* and enter some basic operational information, FBN Benchmarking shows you how your operation compares to anonymized results from thousands of other member farmers who contribute data.
Our tool helps you evaluate past performance on your farm and determine which practices and environmental factors deserve a second look, including:
Seed Brand and Variety
Seeding Rate
GDUs
Crop Rotation
Tillage Practices
Nitrogen Applications
Soil Productivity Index
Precipitation
Planting/Harvest Dates
Field/Enterprise Size
Using this data, you can identify trends by comparing current and past performance on each field or across your entire operation. You can also analyze the relationship between different seed variety-soil type combinations and find the ones that work best for your operation.
To get started with Benchmarking, add planting and harvest events for at least one year — or multiple years, if you choose — to the FBN app and let our tool organize and analyze the information for you; the more data you add, the more detailed and accurate your insights will be.
The data you enter will always remain anonymous to others across the network, both in FBN Benchmarking and other tools.
Navigate to Performance under the My Operation tab in your member account to begin evaluating your farm’s production (Note: Benchmarking is not yet available in the FBN app but can be accessed via desktop or mobile phone by logging into your account at fbn.com).
You can adjust the filters at the top of the page to focus on the parameters that matter most to you, measuring performance by crop against similar farms in your county, region, state or country.
Then break out field-by-field performance by selecting a field you’ve entered into your account according to a whole variety of practices and characteristics specific to that field.
Our tool will also show you the number of acres and fields used to generate the average by which your farm’s performance is benchmarked so you have a clear picture of the dataset with which we’re working.
Benchmarking is only available once certain data requirements are in place in order to ensure your privacy and the privacy of other members across the network: There must be a minimum group of 1,000 acres and 100 fields — and a geographic radius of at least 50 miles/80 kilometers — in order for you to unlock these field-specific insights.
Ready to get a more accurate picture of your farm’s performance? Sign up for a free member account and upload some planting/seeding and harvest data to put Benchmarking to work on your operation.
© 2015-2020 Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. All rights reserved. The sprout logo, “Farmers Business Network”, “FBN”, “FBN Direct”, “Farmers First” and the Farmers First flag logo are registered trademarks and service marks of Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. or its affiliates and are used with permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
* Access to Benchmarking is included with free FBN membership; fees may apply for certain product and service offerings other than membership. Free membership is currently available to Canadian farmers in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan.Asgrow® is a registered trademark of Bayer AG. LG® is a registered trademark of AgReliant Genetics, LLC.