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Mobile platform aims to simplify farmer–elevator relationship

An ag tech startup is simplifying several aspects of the farmer—elevator relationship.

Bushel is a mobile platform that CEO Jake Joraanstad says helps farmers keep track of scale tickets, grain contracts, balance sheets, cash bids and futures prices, as well as a host of other services.

The fully automated product launched a year ago.

“Typically, a grower is used to having to really work hard keeping things up-to-date to make it useful for them.  The key to Bushel is that we work with the ERP system at the elevator, so the information is already being tracked, we’re just bringing it back to the grower for them to view.  You can think of it like your social feeds like on Facebook.”

He tells Brownfield growers really appreciate that because they’re frequently having to stop in or call the elevator to access that information.

“It just makes it really easy for a grower to start making better decisions on the farm from data they don’t have to enter themselves.  It’s data that’s coming to them free-of-charge, the coop and elevator provide the solution, and that’s the biggest benefit we’re seeing.  It’s a constant flow of information.”

At the notion automating the process might hurt the relationship between farmers and elevators, Joraanstad suggests technology like Bushel will hopefully improve it.