How quick sustainability scores are generating renewed interest in conservation

Probably you’ve been there. You get a notification that your credit score has changed. When you dig in, you begin to learn what factors impact that score and how you can improve it. Before long, managing for a healthy credit score is just a part of your plan.

That same strategy is at work for farmers under a new Truterra offering that provides numerical scores on several key stewardship metrics. By providing approximately 30 data points, farmers can quickly get a snapshot of their operation from the standpoint of five stewardship-focused key performance indicators. Once the data are gathered, it requires less than five minutes to enter them in order to get the baseline scores.

Truterra Senior Manager - Technology and Innovation Amanda Neely said this rapid benchmarking is frequently the on-ramp to more extensive conversations about stewardship and sustainability. By taking just a few minutes to review the baseline data for a field or sub-set of fields, farmers quickly get a taste for the type of information and insights they can gather through Truterra. Along the way, farmers begin to learn the language of stewardship and sustainability, including how those factors impact the important natural resources they manage every day.

Unlike engaging in the full Truterra experience, quick scores only reflect a snapshot in time and do not offer the capability of modeling “what-if” scenarios for the future. Data entered are only used for creation of the score and are not stored for future use. However, these snapshots often lead farmers to ask more questions and seek out a more detailed picture of their operation, a process which often leads them to a full Truterra engagement later.

Neely said Truterra created the quick score option to advance the group’s mission of helping farmers protect and enhance their natural resources – regardless of which agronomic partners they are working with. “As a part of Land O’Lakes, we reach 50 percent of working acres in the U.S., but that still means there are farmers we are not reaching in our network. Creating tools such as this one that we can easily share with others helps us support more farmers, regardless of where they are and who they work with.”

Currently, Truterra has licensed this quick stewardship score capability to EFC Systems and AGI to incorporate into their farm management information systems platforms (FieldAlytics and SureTrak, respectively). Both firms have identified the capability as a powerful tool to take grower conversations beyond short-term yield and profitability discussions to include longer-term topics including emerging ecosystem services market opportunities, soil health and legacy preservation.

Neely says more and more entities are expressing interest in licensing this unique scoring capability as they see growing interest in sustainability within their client bases. A quick score enables more engaged conversations with growers, and licensing such capabilities from Truterra enables these groups to advance stewardship on the farm without reinventing the wheel.

Others who share Truterra’s commitment to advancing on-farm sustainability are invited to check out this scoring system for themselves. “We are excited about the ability to share our technology to get more outreach with farmers,” says Neely. “We all win when farmers have the tools they need to protect and enhance their natural resources.”