Agtech adoption continues to be a widespread concern for the sector, but for digital farm management provider CropX, interest in its services and products is on the rise, boosted by economic challenges facing farmers and positive word of mouth, John Gates, chief revenue officer at CropX, told AgTechNavigator.
“A few years ago, a lot of people felt that adoption was stuck, and there was a disconnect between market and technology. We are not really feeling that from a firsthand perspective at CropX,” Gates elaborated.
Today, farmers are facing a host of challenges, from record-low commodity prices to rising input costs, pinching margins. Agtech products that provide tangible benefits to growers are gaining traction, but farmers are doing their homework to ensure that a solution can improve yields and reduce cost, he noted.
Almost half (45%) of 1,201 farmers purchased a farm management system, with only 2% of growers being new buyers, according to a 2024 survey from Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Farmers also gravitated to products that increased revenue, is reliable, and lowered operating cost over being environmentally friendly, has a tax break, or the product requiring no training, BCG added.
“Everybody is naturally keeping a close eye on their spending and their margins with the types of tools that we develop. They are efficiency improvement tools at the end of the day, either helping you to cut back on input costs or raise productivity, raise operational efficiency, sometimes all of those,” Gates said.
He added, “When people go ahead and try out this integrated technology for the first time, they typically do not look back. They experience that water and electricity savings, [and] really practical things like fewer occasions of stuck pivots. Typically, you get a yield pop in your first year from better day-to-day water management and then all that convenience and peace of mind that you get by using digital tools and remote controls instead of manual spot checks.”
Was word of mouth a double-edged sword for agtech?
Word of mouth also plays a huge role in farm communities, which often rely on insight from neighbors and trusted partners and can be a make or break for many agtech companies, Gates said.
“When a tool is really awesome, practical, and valuable, word is going to spread on that, and people are going to try thing that they hear about from trusted advisors and neighbors. ... Conversely, the flip side of that is when something doesn’t work out, then that word is faster.”
John Gates, chief revenue officer at CropX
Agtech first iteration made large promises to farmers, which often felt short on, Gates noted. However, newer products and services entered the market and learned from the mistakes of the previous generation improving agtech’s perception in the process, he added.
“When a tool is really awesome, practical, and valuable, word is going to spread on that, and people are going to try thing that they hear about from trusted advisors and neighbors. ... Conversely, the flip side of that is when something doesn’t work out, then that word is faster,” he elaborated.
CropX deepens integration with Reinke
As part of its growth strategy, CropX is finding integration partners, including with irrigation system company Reinke and John Deere, Gates noted. CropX’s first integration with Reinke launched nearly five years ago, Gates explained. Last month, CropX and Reinke revealed a deeper integration between the two companies’ products, he added.
Farmers can access CropX data, including agronomic calculations, from Reinke’s ReinCloud 3 platform without the need to switch between separate applications, the companies shared in a press release. The integration works with CropX’s rain gauges, soil moisture sensors, and weather stations.
The integration streamlines the user experience, and a “pivot operator can go all the way from equipment monitoring to decision support using the data that CropX provides through a single interface,” Gates said.
“A farmer or one of their service providers can use our real-time measurements and take action immediately when they need to. ... We worked on making it as easy as possible,” Gates elaborated.
