NewsLetter Accompanying
"Product Efficacy: Who Will Conduct the Tests?"
NewsLetter Accompanying
"Product Efficacy: Who Will Conduct the Tests?"
Crop Technology, Inc.
NewsLetter
September 1995
If you are investing in precision farming technologies to make more money
and are confused over where your precision farming dollars should go, this
letter and the enclosed discussion"; Product Efficacy: Who Will Conduct
the Tests?" speak directly to your concerns. The enclosed discusses
a trend in agriculture currently promoted in the media. If you think this
trend is not in the best interests of your farm operation, you can change
it by contacting the ag-media of your choice and voicing your opinion.
As you will read, some are expressing the need for official tests of precision
farming technologies to provide growers with a reliable, scientific basis
upon which to make their purchasing decisions.
Great Idea!
The problem, however, is that the tests are to be engineering tests and
the list of those being proposed includes those who compete, or seek to
compete, against the products being evaluated. These include those so large
that they dwarf even the giants of agriculture, with the unfair advantage
of using your tax dollars to compete, and who do not openly identify themselves
as competitors.
The time-honored "Trial-by-Fire," where experienced and unbiased
growers, USDA extension agents, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, and
university plant and soil scientists conduct evaluations in real-world crop
production -- for some unexplained reason -- has been falling out of favor
recently. For those of us who believe that a technology, no matter how
perfect it might be from an engineering standpoint, is worth nothing
if it cannot produce benefits for growers in real crop production; it is
easy to see that this departure in evaluation concepts is wrong for the
economics of agriculture.
This change is a warped implementation of "judging one by a jury of
one's peers." In the case of precision farming manufacturers, their
"peers" just happen to be their competitors, current and aspiring,
and no court of law would permit one competitor to sit in judgment of another.
In agriculture (just like in medicine), the proof of the pudding
is in the eating (the End Results), not in the proprietary ingredients
nor proprietary methodology. Besides, endorsement by one's peers on the
"ingredients" or the methodology is no insurance, or assurance,
that the pudding is edible, much less tasty. Will a patient improve?
Will a grower net more profit?
Do you believe that engineers, software or hardware wizards, etc., should
be entrusted with conducting officially sanctioned evaluations of those
they aspire to compete against (with over $25,000,000 of your taxpayer
dollars)? Do you believe that engineers and others who have never developed
a precision farming product to completion (beyond market introduction),
but are confident that they can establish the industry standards, should
be the ones to establish the industry's standards?
Do you believe that any technology should be subjected to standards established
by a private investor or anonymous parties, in a fledging field where, as
yet, there are no performance standards, just a straight-forward, quantifiable
goal: increasing net profits through the efficient distribution of ag-inputs?
Or do you believe that the role of plant and soil scientists and others
who appreciate the bottom line concerns of growers should be relegated to
the peripheral edges, rather than the mainstream, of conducting evaluations
and establishing performance standards in precision farming? And do you
believe that their federal budgets should reflect this "peripheral
importance"?
If not, then do something to see that science and common sense are re-introduced
into precision farming. Don't wait until the results of "official,"
government-sponsored, precision farming "evaluations" treat input
and yield data as insignificant afterthoughts or report information which
is not as "unbiased" or "fair" as you trust it to be.
Since neither Democrats nor Republicans condone the use of public funds
to compete against the private sector, surely you share our amazement at
the generous federal funding, available to just one government lab, for
Energy and Aerospace employees out in Idaho, to compete against U.S. ag-manufacturers.
Meanwhile, plant and soil scientists -- needed to establish the requirements
of precision farming technologies and to evaluate the end results -- across
the heartland are getting their federal budgets slashed.
In 1988, before "precision farming" became the household phrase
it is now; a small engineering firm became a target of these so-called "evaluations,"
mostly by INEL and government engineers. The "evaluations" were
designed by people with no experience in crop production (much less midwest
crop production), who, nonetheless, declared: they knew exactly what
was required of the technology and knew that crops would respond to their
technology concept, and not to others.
Insisting "Yield is not Important," actual fertilizer consumption
and yield production data from real, full scale, midwest farm operations
were considered devious "smoke screens" to "true"
product efficacy. That was the policy, unless ... outside forces (flood,
drought, insect or weed infestation, concrete driveway test plots, broken
wires, etc.) were predicted to impair [prototype] performance. Then, yield
became "important."
These people operated (and still do) on the premise that smaller companies
(like all those who researched, developed, and introduced many of the innovative
farming technologies currently available) get in the way of progress
and poison the technological adoption process.
These well funded (but still aspiring) competitors, with special interests
of their own, used the technique described above to justify their efforts
to gain control of the technology now known as the Soil Doctor® System,
ostensibly for the "greater good." Due only to the persistent
efforts of U.S. Congressmen and Senators throughout the past seven years,
Crop Technology, Inc. is free of this threat.
The point of this letter -- there was nothing to gain (for anyone but the
competitor), but much to lose by the engineering firm (and by anyone relying
upon the so-called "findings"). And in 1995, there is still nothing
to gain in an atmosphere where "evaluations" by competitors seem
"fair" to the media, and eventually others, and rejecting them
seems "suspicious" instead of good business sense.
INEL/Lockheed Martin and more modest engineering organizations are not the
pathway to obtaining objective precision farming evaluation results -- results
upon which a grower can rely to assess the potential economic benefits to
his farm operation and then make his purchasing decision with confidence.
They are, however, the direct pathway for someone in agriculture, particularly
for someone aspiring to compete in agriculture, to gain a clear, unfair
competitive advantage over the rest of the industry, even over the large
companies.
Please contact any in the media who provide an unchallenged public soapbox
to those who advocate "official" engineering tests -- ostensibly
to address the needs of farmers, inevitably as a basis for drafting environmental
regulations, but always to satisfy the curiosity of fellow-engineers --
whereby unfair business practices are forced upon others.
And contact your U.S. Congressman and Senators, too, and tell them how you
feel about your tax dollars being used -- not to advance precision farming
by supporting plant and soil scientists -- but to support a government lab's
efforts to compete against (and quite possibly target, disparage, and take
from) U.S. ag-manufacturers.
Don't wait until it happens again and the emphasis again is: "Yield
is not Important, just [their] Standards are." Some already preach
that it is "wrong" for a company "to not share" its
intellectual property (similar to a grower not sharing his field data),
and they blacklist the company to demonstrate their conviction. --
Customer yield data be damned!
If you have any questions or take exception with anything herein please
contact:
Sylvia A.M. Colburn
Vice President
CROP TECHNOLOGY, INC.
In addition to the work at the University of Kentucky by Dr. Lloyd Murdock,
Soil Doctor® System testing is underway by Dr. Jay Johnson (Ohio State
University), Dr. Dave Mengel (Purdue University), and plans are in the making
for Dr. Randy Killorn (Iowa State University) and other midwest plant and
soil scientists. Already tight federal budgets, cut further back, have impeded
this independent evaluation process.
Crop Technology, Inc. has patents both issued and pending in the U.S., Canada,
Europe, and other far away places. CTI enjoys the same rights as all U.S.
citizens to protect all their intellectual property, including their trade
secrets.
1 800 N DR - CROP (800 637-2767)
FAX: 281 370-2470
E-Mail: colburn@soildoctor.com