Case study: TELUS Agronomy platform eliminates friction for West Texas agronomy team 

TELUS AGRONOMY | TEXAS PRODUCERS COOP | POSTED OCTOBER 25, 2023

West Texas is cotton country. But it’s just one of the crops the grower customers of Texas Producers Coop in Sudan, Texas, raise alongside corn, alfalfa, sorghum, field peas and wheat. Though it’s in many ways a diverse range of crops, they all have one thing in common: Friction at key steps in the process of raising them can sometimes disrupt progress and stand in the way of reaching optimal crop output and quality. 

Eliminating that friction is a big reason Tanner Streety and his team are entering year-three of working with the TELUS Agronomy platform. One of five agronomists on the cooperative’s team, Streety said the platform facilitates access to both the data and information to enable him to best manage things like aerial herbicide applications. 

“We have historically had communication barriers between us and our aerial applicators,” Streety said. “They need precise field locations as well as information on what’s in surrounding fields so they can be confident in what they’re applying, where they’re applying it and that they won’t have any issues with drift affecting adjacent fields.” 

Communication from the agronomist to the applicator 

A big part of that equation isn’t just when and where a crop protection product is applied. The product itself is massively important in ensuring maximum crop safety each trip to the field. TELUS Agronomy enables Streety to also track products, application times and specific field locations — for both those being treated and adjacent fields that may be susceptible to damage from off-target movement of herbicides or pesticides — in one place. This has enabled him to shore up past data gaps and friction points that sometimes obstructed timely application. 

“We can add GPS coordinates and provide visuals of the field so applicators can see the surrounding fields and what is in them. If we have a picture of all the fields and can say ‘the one to the west has cotton and the one to the south has milo,’ they can verify they’re not going to have an issue with potential drift risk,” Streety said. “We’re adapting TELUS Agronomy to a specific agronomic need.” 

Before those products are applied, Streety’s full team relies on TELUS Agronomy to connect agronomic recommendations in the field to products in the warehouse and document every step in between. The cloud-based platform houses all that data and information in one place, facilitating efficient operations between agronomy and application teams at Texas Producers Coop. 

“Our agronomists can communicate any weed or insect pressures he sees in a field, whichbecomes part of that field’s historical data, then it’s communicated from the agronomy department to the warehouse team, applicators and ultimately our invoicing department,” Streety said. “It helps our customers see the insect and weed pressures they’ve faced historically so they can plan ahead and take quick action based on our recommendations.” 

Other data and information benefits of TELUS Agronomy 

Streety’s also discovered an unplanned benefit of TELUS Agronomy. When new agronomists or applicators join his team, having a one-stop shop for customer information, including maps showing land ownership, makes it easier to ensure they’re working in the right fields. That ultimately contributes to quick, effective service. 

“A lot of our guys are pretty new, and we’ve found this platform cuts the learning curve in half because they have all of this field-level information, including who owns each field,” Streety said. “It really helps with the logistics side of our business.” 

In the future, Streety said he’ll look to TELUS Agronomy to help him manage crop protection product inventory, ultimately helping ensure he’s got the right products — in the right quantities — for his customers when they need them. 

“We hope to be able to actually create tickets based on the inventory we pull as we’re using it. Ideally, we hope to have a system that creates those tickets that are automatically sent to our billing department via something like a QR code on products,” Streety said. “We’re always looking for ways to get customers on board with using the platform, and having all this documentation without handling tons of paper or sending thousands of texts or phone calls is a big part of that.”