We're almost halfway through 2020, and it hasn't been an easy year. There's a lot going on in the world, but despite everything, here at Conservis we're doing what farmers do: buckling down and focusing on work that matters.

Pat Christie, a founder of Conservis and EVP of Sales and Marketing, gives us his take on where we've been as a company and where we're headed in 2020. 

Since 2009, we've built the useful, efficient technology solutions farmers deserve in their complex, ever-changing operations. The foundation of Conservis has been these tools: better recordkeeping through data centralization and real-time accessibility, quick and clear communication across the whole team, accurate and reliable tracking of loads so that money isn't lost, and simple, easy reporting for advisors and stakeholders in the business.

"We spent the last decade building the infrastructure to help farmers get the most out of their data and build profitable, smart businesses," said Pat. 

Last year held some exciting developments in our company. Pat summarized it like this: "The year of 2019 was about zeroing in on cost of production, taking all the learnings from collecting data on-farm and bringing great financial insights to the farm." 

In 2019, we formalized our partnership with Rabo AgriFinance, an exciting step that gave us access to farm financial experts to help us think and build smarter tools. We worked to ensure that it’s easy to see the financial results of farm decisions by investing in connecting accounting systems to operational data. We also rolled out Zone Economics, giving growers the ability to see not only crop and field performance, but dig deeper into sub-field costs and ROI. We continued to invest in new crops. "2019 was the year of hemp—we had many hemp growers come aboard. We also saw a lot of permanent crop operations come in," said Pat. 

For over a decade, we've worked alongside farmers to solve real problems in agriculture. We're so proud to have made a positive contribution to the work farmers do (and we're thrilled they agree).

As farmers well know, you can always improve, and there's always more work to do. In 2020, we're moving past building infrastructure to building results on-farm. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, farmers are looking for ways to survive and thrive for tomorrow, and we want to be part of the solution. Here's Pat's take on where we're heading as a company who cares about farmers and farming.

Gathering, organizing, and integrating the mountains of farm data is still a priority. "We’re continuing to invest in easing the burden to collect data," Pat said. "Data collection has been, and in some cases still is, one of the biggest issues in making it easy to get helpful information out of any farm management system." We're proud of our integration with John Deere Operations Center and Climate Fieldview™, but we're working on our ability to integrate with more systems. "There are other tools farmers work with that they want to have come into one space," Pat said.

Another focus is helping our farmers gain access to new markets. "Sustainability at large is actually a new market opportunity for the farmer," Pat said. "How can proving practices, or changing practices to get access to a new market—and then having the ability to demonstrate traceability for what you did—link the dots to better financial results? Those are all things that we're investing in on behalf of the farmer." 

We'll continue to do what we do: develop technology solutions that bring real value to the farm, paired with the best customer support around. "For the future, our proposition is really simple: Continue to build the best platform for our farmers that provide the insights they need, and continue to attract, hire, and train the best people to work with those farmers," said Pat.

Finally, we've always seen farmers as partners. Never have we come to tell farmers how to farm better: they tell us, and we work together. That isn't going to change. Pat put it this way: "In 2020, it’s ongoing: learning, listening, building; learning, listening, building."

Conservis is the leading independent farm management software. We'd love to chat about how our tools can support your operation.