Customer Spotlight: Chad Groenhagen
Chad Groenhagen is a native son of northern Illinois. He’s been farming with his father, uncle, and grandfather on their multi-generational farm for years. To make their operation successful, Chad combines years of farming know-how with the best new farming technologies. Chad relies on PROFITLAYERS® to understand his farm’s profit breakdowns and identify the best profit-driving practices for his fields.
Making Data Analysis Easy
As part of Circle G Farms and Feedlots, Inc., Chad raises corn, soybeans, wheat, and feeds cattle as part of his diverse operation. Two years ago, Chad started using PROFITLAYERS®, initially to find a better solution for managing and analyzing his farm data. “We as producers create an enormous amount of data on our farms,” Chad says. “Before PROFITLAYERS® came along, we were using an old and outdated analog system to understand our data. Now we have an affordable, simple tool that makes the process easy.”
According to Chad, one of the biggest benefits to the PROFITLAYERS® system is how user-friendly the tools are. Chad has been gathering his data on Climate FieldView for years and was impressed to see how easily his data loaded into his PROFITLAYERS® account. “It’s obvious to see that the creators of PROFITLAYERS® have really thought about keeping the grower’s priorities first when creating this platform,” said Chad. “It’s quick and easy to enter your input pricing and have those prices applied to your field maps and operations.”
True ROI by Farming Practice
Those field operations, like extra applications or tillage passes, are important when determining the ROIs and overall profit of a farm. PROFITLAYERS® comes with tools like the Zone Analysis, which can show you the ROI of a new variety, additional application, application/seeding rate, or extra tillage pass. Chad quickly saw the financial benefits of the Zone Analysis, stating, “The ability to see, at a sub-field level, which inputs resulted in boosts to our profits has a tremendous amount of value.”
The PROFITLAYERS® analysis system also extends to more than just applications and passes. Using the Variety Analysis, PROFITLAYERS® calculates profits and ROI breakdowns by seeded hybrids. Speaking about the Variety Analysis, Chad mentioned, “We do variable rate seeding with multiple varieties, and PROFITLAYERS® helps break all that information down and show which hybrids and seeding rates pushed our profits higher.”
The Future Looks Bright
As he continues to use PROFITLAYERS® to understand the profits and ROIs of his farm choices and practices, Chad says he is looking forward to using the new reporting features that are in development. As we noted in our recent blog post, PROFITLAYERS® recently released the Farm Reports, a tool that builds custom profitability performance reports at the overall farm level. “I am excited to be able to select a product, and immediately see what its ROI was across all of our different management practices,” says Chad. “That kind of reporting will really shine a spotlight on what practices and inputs we are most profitable with.”
For now, Chad says he is excited about the progress of PROFITLAYERS® in the past year and is eager to see where the platform is headed for the future.
Ready to understand your farm’s ROI breakdowns? Jump into PROFITLAYERS® to see the value our digital tools and services can bring to your operation.
