CoffeeTalk: Capturing Premiums with Existing Grain Characteristics

In the Capturing Premiums with Existing Grain Characteristics CoffeeTalk webinar, AGI SureTrack Brand Ambassador, Todd Sears, shares the importance of on-farm grain quality and characteristic verification, and SureTrack’s role in helping farmers capture premiums through verification from seed bag through storage.

“What we are trying to accomplish through AGI as a whole is a brand family where all equipment is recognized as SureTrack Ready,” Sears says.

And what that means for the SureTrack customer is the opportunity to hone-in on the management opportunities that are both costing and saving money: in seed selection, in growing, in storage and in defining and capturing market premiums.

Sears says that when the company started in grain management, it was to build relationships and a footprint in the farming community that would carry over to meet the contract specifications processors are looking for.

“Today, we have over 700 million bushels of farmer-owned grain from growers who have opted in to allow us to market their grain nationwide,” he says, “Those bushels represent 698 different varieties and commodities, and the footprint is there to supply processors.”

Once the track and trace was implemented in BinManager, the question Sears says he received from processors was: “How do we know the grain has the characteristics that we need?”

The relationship that was started with the Perten company is one that has not only helped farmers verify the characteristics of the grain they are trying to market, but one that has allowed processors to be confident that the grain they are considering purchasing will meet their specifications. A win-win.

And that, says Sears, is why SureTrack began the relationship with Perten that led to the integration of an on-farm verification solution.

The Perten 9500, the model SureTrack interfaces with, is one of the fastest analyzers on the market, delivering results in less than 30 seconds with instant upload—a direct communication between the farm and processor.

“Processors don’t want to argue about grain characteristics when the semi is on the scale,” Sears says, “They need to know that what they purchase or contract to purchase is what will be delivered. The Perten 9500 does that.”

Once purchased and installed at the farm, the Perten 9500 links to the bins being managed by the BinManager®, and the data can be shared directly from the FARM platform to the PRO platform, giving processors real-time updates on the condition of their purchase. Once a sample is analyzed, the results cannot be changed, allowing processors to be confident in their purchase.

The Perten 9500 is one of the few grain analyzers on the market to receive a Certificate of Conformance for National Type Equipment Program (NTEP), meaning the analyzer met or exceeded the National Institute of Standards and Technologies’ rigorous testing requirements. The systematic testing ensures the consistency and performance of devices that are used for selling, purchasing, exchanging, custody transfer, or establishing the cost for services or hire on the basis of measurement.

Additionally, the Perten 9500 analyzer can be state certified for further verification, and, when linked to BinManager, also allows bins to be segregated based on the characteristics of the grain they contain.

After purchase the Perten 9500 is included in the FARM subscription and is warrantied for the life of the FARM subscription.

And Sears shares that what SureTrack is providing goes beyond grain conditioning and management.

The management solution, when both FARM and PRO platforms are used in unison, provides a fully traceable product, from seed bag through processor storage.

“We know that we can’t save a farm profitable, but we can drive revenue and the Perten 9500 is one more piece in that puzzle of creating premium opportunity by knowing—and being able to share that knowledge—exactly what you have.”