General Reporting Principles
Grower as Innovator – Because all farms are unique, all growers have something valuable to learn from similar farmers. The N Balance, N Practices, and N Economics benchmark reports facilitate data sharing and learning among independent farmers, crop advisors, and scientists.
Practice & Product Agnostic – The system does not favor any subset of practices or products. Practices are ranked exclusively by their correlation to yield and economic gain.
Scientific – Field-level data are automatically filtered to hold constant the climate and soil variables that farmers can’t control, to quantify the impact of fifteen different practices they can control.
Anonymity – Only anonymous results will ever be shared among users. Reports must contain at least five growers before they are unlocked.
What is N Balance?
N Balance is simply the difference between the pounds of nitrogen entering and leaving farmland each year. We like N Balance because it is tied directly to farming decisions, which makes it valuable for helping farmers see how they compare to neighbors and deciding if they have room to improve or not.
N BALANCE BENCHMARK – “Do I have room to improve?”
•Compared to Peers – Farmers can see at a glance how they compare to anonymous neighbors.
•Clear Guidance - Vertical gold bars represent the desired N Balance range. Having a green bar is desirable, having a red bar is not.
•Excessive N Balance – Being above the right gold bar leads to poor economic and ecological outcomes.
•Insufficient N Balance – Being below the left gold bar leads to organic matter mining, which harms soil health.
N PRACTICES BENCHMARK – “Which practices maximize yield?”
Practices Tracked - MyFarms tracks fifteen nitrogen management practices, which growers in a specific comparison group actively use in the course of a typical growing season.
Yield Gain - The N Practices report quantifies the yield gain associated with each N management practice based on the field data provided by a grower and his or her peer group.
N ECONOMICS BENCHMARK – “Which practices actually pay?”
Economic Gain - The N Economics report quantifies the economic gain associated with each N management practice based on the field data provided by a grower and his or her peer group.