The business of farmland transactions and asset management is digitizing quickly. Twenty years ago, a farmland professional needed to take a trip to the local USDA NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) office to get a soil map for a farmland asset. The NRCS staff would use the USDA farm and tract number to find the asset in a binder, pull the page(s) with the map, and run the pages through the copying machine to produce hard copies of the map.

Figure 1 identifies a select set of key progress points in the farmland business digitization process over the past twenty years. Digital access to soil maps emerged with Surety in 2004 and USDA’s release of the Web Soil Survey in 2005. These data resources significantly improved efficiency for farmland professionals understanding basic soil characteristics for farmland assets. In 2008 USDA released full coverage across the U.S. of the Cropland Data Layer (CDL) resource. CDL is a satellite data processing algorithm that identifies the crop, or other vegetation, growing on an asset. The CDL vegetative characterization was initially delivered at a 30m scale and is now available at a 10m scale. This data resource provides a complete history of crop production for an asset quickly and seamlessly. CoreLogic released its ownership data resources in 2010. This was impactful for all real estate asset classes, eliminating the need to communicate with local assessor offices to identify asset owners and their contact information.

Surety released its Surety Pro toolkit in 2012 that integrated a broad set of additional spatial data layers including topography, FSA field boundaries, floodplains, and many others. Surety Pro delivered a comprehensive web-based data resource for farmland professionals to remotely access the data needed to get a baseline characterization of farmland assets. The release of Surety Pro represented a culmination of a broad effort in digitizing spatial data required to develop more advanced analytics and algorithms for farmland.

AcreValue provided an early example in 2014 of utilizing robust spatial data to algorithmically determine farmland values. The AcreValue algorithms integrated dozens of data layers to estimate the value of individual farmland assets. Building upon the work of AcreValue, several startup companies have emerged continuing to build more advanced data resources and tools to support farmland professionals.

These resources and tools are focused on automating many of the core workflows executed regularly in farmland transactions and management. This includes comparative market analyses, marketing processes, detailed map development, energy infrastructure analyses, and algorithmic cash rent analyses. Farmland professionals now have the ability to evaluate asset characteristics, establish market values, and develop asset management strategies using digital mapping and analysis tools.

Figure 1. Timeline of key digital resources emerging for farmland professionals.

Peoples Company has been aggressively engaging emerging digital tools and incorporating the improved outcomes these tools provide into our business workflows over the past twenty years. The core business strategy is to provide each Peoples Company farmland professional with the best available digital resources to make them as efficient and effective as possible. This commitment has, and continues, to require significant investment. Over the past two years, Peoples Company has consolidated its digital strategy around three primary principles:

1. Peoples Company has farmland professionals working in all the major U.S. agricultural regions executing workflows with our clients that are time-tested and proven to create successful outcomes. We need our digital tools to be calibrated to facilitate these proven workflows.

2. New data resources, algorithms, and workflow tools will continue to emerge. We need our digital framework to be open and agile for integrating these emerging resources.

3. The Peoples Company professionals executing appraisals, land management, brokerage, energy management, crop insurance, and capital market services across the U.S. every day are creating value-added expert information on thousands of farmland assets every year. We need our digital framework to capture that value-added expert information seamlessly to enable the most collaborative farmland team possible.

These three principles have guided the development of the Peoples Company digital framework, FarmWorth. Our FarmWorth solution is built to provide Peoples Company farmland professionals with the best available digital resources assembled to efficiently execute our business workflows. FarmWorth is a web-based application available with desktop and mobile access. FarmWorth is an open framework built to quickly integrate data resources and exchange information seamlessly with data service providers via API. The key features of FarmWorth include:

1. Mapping tools to quickly identify and investigate assets including parcel boundaries and USDA Common Land Units (CLUs).

2. A comprehensive set of data layers is required to provide an initial characterization of a farmland asset including soils, floodplain hazards, topography, crop history utilizing CDL, PLSS boundaries, wetlands, opportunity zones, and several more.

3. Assessor-reported ownership data including names and contact information for every parcel in the U.S.

4. A dashboard (Fig 2.) view that lets each Peoples Company farmland professional view all assets engaged across each business unit.

5. Energy and transmission infrastructure data including wind, solar, transmission lines, substations, and oil and gas wells.

6. A deep comparable sale dataset with tools available to quickly assemble comparable market analyses (CMAs).

7. A farmland insights engine that integrates data resources including county and state-level farmland values, county cash rents, crop insurance expected and historic yields, crop insurance loss ratios, crop insurance premiums, and many more state and county-level metrics.

Figure 2. FarmWorth dashboard view with all assets and energy infrastructure data displayed.

FarmWorth has been assembled to quickly and efficiently characterize assets. At Peoples Company we have a map binder that includes all base characterization data for every asset evaluated in each business unit. FarmWorth has reduced the time to create that map binder from 30-40 minutes for a typical farmland asset down to 3-5 minutes. The ability of each farmland professional in the company to evaluate assets with this significant reduction in time commitment is substantially impactful for each professional and their clients. The dashboard view of all assets engaged by professionals within the company is an incredibly powerful tool for collaboration. Each individual working within Peoples Company can immediately see other assets that have been evaluated by other Peoples Company staff. Critical value-added information can be exchanged with a simple phone call or email to a co-worker. The advanced analysis tools within FarmWorth help our professionals quickly identify opportunities and establish accurate value with each farmland asset. The energy and transmission infrastructure data layers quickly support the identification of revenue expansion opportunities for farmland assets. The ability to assemble a comprehensive CMA within minutes instead of a typical timeline of multiple hours supports a clear advantage in establishing asset values. The insights tools support a deep understanding of the agricultural production and crop insurance revenue protection opportunities for each asset evaluated.

The most important outcome provided by our FarmWorth digital framework is delivering better outcomes for Peoples Company clients. FarmWorth facilitates fast, comprehensive, and accurate information exchange with our clients for each asset being engaged across all Peoples Company business units. The analysis and analytics tools data layers provided by FarmWorth support the evaluation of value-added opportunities for our client’s assets. This outcome creates more value. Additionally, the collaborative dashboard provides the combined knowledge of the entire Peoples Company professional team for each individual’s client.

The farmland transaction and asset management businesses are digitizing very quickly. This process is creating value for the asset class through increased transactional efficiency and better information. Peoples Company has been investing in the best digital tools for our farmland professionals consistently over the past twenty years. This investment has culminated in the development of our FarmWorth digital framework. FarmWorth provides our farmland professionals, and their clients, with the best possible outcomes for their assets.