Case study: TELUS Agronomy platform helps agronomist sustain growth amid challenges for high desert farmers

TELUS AGRONOMY | GW OSTEEN & ASSOCIATES | POSTED OCTOBER 25, 2023

Gary Osteen spends a lot of time on his customers’ land, making observations and collecting data he later applies to agronomic recommendations. That’s where he feels he belongs. And now with the TELUS Agronomy platform, he’s able to do even more of that important work that ultimately contributes to high performance crops in the San Joaquin Valley. 

The longtime ag consultant and forensic pest control adviser (PCA) with GW Osteen & Associates based in Bakersfield, California, has spent four decades advising area growers. In that time, Osteen has seen massive change — driven by evolving technology tools — in both how he gets his work done every day in the field and how growers incorporate the information he provides into their operations. Gone are the days of frequent in-person meetings and handwritten recommendations. Now, the veteran PCA leverages TELUS Agronomy to not just provide precise, specific agronomic recommendations for his growers’ benefit, but do so with an efficiency that was once impossible. 

“The most important thing I do is get out to check fields, so that’s where I need to spend all my time. In the past, I’d check a field, then try to track down the grower and talk face-to-face for an hour about my recommendations,” Osteen said. “So I was limited in how much work I could do and how many acres I could cover in a day. That has all changed.” 

Streamlining pest control compliance 

Growers in the San Joaquin Valley — the home of dozens of crops where Osteen works primarily in almonds, pistachios, grapes, cherries, blueberries, alfalfa and small grains — must report all pesticide applications to ensure the right products in the right quantities are applied only where they’re intended. It’s historically been a relatively time-consuming process of shuffling paper and sending — by mail or email — reports to county- and state-level officials. The time required once kept Osteen out of the field and added to the laundry list of administrative tasks for his growers. With TELUS Agronomy, that’s no longer the case. 

“I will write a recommendation in TELUS Agronomy, send it to the grower and he or she can verify a lot of information like the time and date of the application, then send it to the county to verify compliance. It’s easier for my growers, and it’s easier for me,” Osteen said. “We all have records of everything that’s done as well as product labels and any relevant warnings or material safety data.”

Beyond just the amount and organization of that important data and information for each field application it contains and manages, TELUS Agronomy enables Osteen to make sure his crop protection recommendations are safe, compliant and according to label instructions. Now that he’s in his third year working in the platform, his county ag commissioner’s team knows what to expect when they see one of Osteen’s recommendations. Now, compliance confirmation is another area in which what once took hours now just takes a few moments. 

“The county ag commissioner’s office will send a representative to audit my recommendations every other year and when they see I’ve done them in TELUS Agronomy, they know they can expect well organized, detailed documentation,” Osteen said. “It’s a quick process and they don’t spend much time.” 

“Forty years ago when I first started, writing about 250 recommendations each year was about all I could do. In 2022, I wrote over 900 recommendations. I could have never done that before working with TELUS Agronomy,” Osteen said. “I like to say that I can work from sunup to sundown in the fields and come home and write recommendations all night. The tool has helped make us more efficient. I can cover a lot more acres and maintain a constant flow of work.”

What that time savings mean for Osteen’s business 

The combination of being able to quickly share his recommendations with his grower customers and confirm crop protection compliance has had a massive positive impact on Osteen’s business overall. Though he may go weeks or months without face-to face contact with some of his customers, overall communication has improved because of tools like TELUS Agronomy. And that’s opened up a lot of opportunity for new growth for the veteran PCA. 

Looking ahead, Osteen believes though the technology learning curve will remain an occasional challenge in the near future, the adoption of tools like TELUS Agronomy will continue to grow as technology attitudes and aptitudes change. Advancing the adoption curve of such tools will be a win-win in Osteen’s mind; it will enable growers to advance their production by applying precise, valuable data and information to the yield and quality of what they grow, and it will help him strengthen the types of grower relationships that have been so important throughout his career. 

“I think with TELUS Agronomy, we’re evolving and improving over the old ways of doing our work. But it’s still taking time for growers to catch on in some cases. We will continue to work with growers on the value of the platform,” Osteen said. “I’ve been through several waves like this in the industry over the last 40 years, and the growers who don’t keep up with the latest information and manage their crops accordingly usually get left behind and are soon out of business. This type of meaningful technology will help us all grow and get better.”