Continuum Ag has some exciting news!
At Continuum Ag, we’re very excited to announce the new features that have just been launched to our TopSoil software. The Farm Profile, Regen Returns Report, and Regen Roadmap are all tools that are going to help farmers successfully implement Regenerative Ag on their farms, all while keeping a close watch on their profitability.
Farm Profile
Our Farm Profile is a tool that helps farmers with record keeping, specifically when it comes to carbon markets and our Regen Roadmap, which I’ll get into later.
First, growers select which crops that they have grown on their operation since 2010. Then, they simply fill out their management practices for their fertilizer program, tillage practices, planting, pesticide applications, harvest, irrigation, and cover crop use for each crop that they farm. We’ve seen that this typically takes around an hour to fill out all of this data. Once they’ve finished filling out their data, they can then assign a crop to each of their fields all the way back to 2010. Once they’ve assigned crops to each of their fields, they can now make edits to their original version of management practices that they filled out, field by field, and year by year as needed.
In the future, as carbon markets develop and farmers take part in programs that suit their interest, our hope is that the Farm Profile can be your file to show carbon companies what your on-farm practices have looked like since 2010.
Regen Returns Report
Next is our Regen Returns tool. This is a tool that projects future profitability in implementing regenerative ag practices. Growers input their sale price per bushel and yield. Then, they put in their estimated costs per acre including input costs, land costs, etc. The input column where growers input data has a column next to it with per acre costs based off of on-farm data from the 2021 Iowa State Survey. This is to give growers an idea of the average for Iowa farmers if they aren’t sure what some of their per acre expenses are. Once changes have been made to all of your expenses, the Regen Returns Report is ready.
Based off of real on-farm data, this is our projection for what your profitability can look like in the future as you implement regenerative ag practices. As many of us in the Regen Ag community have seen, there’s typically a dip in year 1, but as your soil health increases, your microbial communities gain traction, and more nutrient cycling occurs. Profitability then grows as your need for inputs decrease. If you’re interested in implementing regenerative ag on your farm, but worried about what your profitability is going to look like, go check this tool out to see what it looks like with your actual costs.
Regen Roadmap
Our Regen Roadmap is our detailed, field by field consulting plan for your farm. Using your data from the Farm Profile, we fill out our best recommendation for your fields for this crop year. From cover crop management, to transitioning to no-till on your farm, we can provide you with tailored advice to get your soil health where you would like it to be.
The Regen Roadmap comes with the following:
- Help with filling out your farm profile.
- An initial meeting with our customer success team to establish goals and expectations.
- The actual Regen Roadmap Report delivered to you to view and work with us to make tweaks to it as needed.
- The Roadmap includes a financial risk and profit potential assessment, practice types to be implemented for each field, necessary details for each field, and desired timing for carrying out certain practices.
- Monthly check ins from your customer success representative.
- An end of year meeting to recap how the year went and reframe expectations and goals as needed.
- A finalized version of your regen roadmap with detailed actual practices, ready to continue on for the next growing season.
The Regen Roadmap services cost $5/acre.
RightWay Soil Sampling
And, as always, we have our RightWay Soil Sampling program.
RightWay soil sampling comes with the following:
- 10 acre zones that you can view on TopSoil based off of soil type, slope, elevation, and crop suitability ratings. We can also add in other data layers if you provide them.
- On-site soil sampling and shipment to the lab.
- Maps on TopSoil showing the soil data. This can also be viewed in an excel spreadsheet. This comes with the low to high range of levels for each Haney Test parameter, so you know where your fields stand.
- Custom variable rate fertilizer recommendations. These can be viewed in TopSoil, and they can be sent to your local co-op or ag retailer for application.
RightWay soil sampling services cost $10/acre.
At Continuum Ag, we’re so excited to be sharing all of these new features with you. If you have any questions, there is more information on the RightWay Program Here, and more information on the Regen Roadmap here. Please feel free to reach out to me via phone or email about any of this information as well.