Habitat & Conservation  |  04/20/2021

Identifying Opportunity Acres with John Deere Ops Center and Granular Insights


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Lead image features the Granular Insights Compare Layer Tool. In this example Yield is compared to Profit for 2019 Corn showing how ranges of yield either are net positive or negative. The darker the green the more profitable the area of the field. Conversely, dark red means a loss.


By Cristin Weber and Scott Stipetich

John Deere launched the MyJohnDeere platform almost a decade ago to provide growers with an online software tool for data management. As time has progressed and technology on the farm evolves, it has become increasingly more important to be able to actively manage every acre in an operation. The JD Operations Center does just that. With the click of a button, operators can see where their equipment is at, run an analysis to see how specific products performed, and share planted and harvested acres with their crop insurance agent.  In fact, that’s just a short list of capabilities John Deere has provided its customers. 

Collecting useable on-farm data is crucial to being able to analyze decisions made and adjusting for future decisions like knowing what products perform the best on specific soil types, assessing planting dates or combine speeds and how they impact yield, and identifying areas that are continually net-negative. Kyle Plattner of John Deere, reiterated the importance of on-farm data; “You can’t manage what you aren’t measuring.”  

The team at John Deere is continually working to improve upon all the work that has already been done to help do the measuring. One way of doing that is by partnering with Granular Insights. Granular has a free tool that allows data from the Operations Center to pair with farm inputs, creating a field profitability map.  Watch a demonstration of Granular Insights profit mapping here:



Creating the visual component helps target the marginal lands where a spreadsheet analysis can miss finding those opportunities for change. When the data layers are moved to Granular Insights, it automatically assigns a generic budget for each field. All these numbers can be edited to meet the specific financials on each field. Using the Compare Layers Tool, it allows the user to compare the profit layer for two years next to each other. The net negative areas become apparent by filtering through the years of data. The connections between Granular and John Deere allow the profit maps created in Granular Insights to transfer back to the Operations Center.

Precision conservation is a management tool aimed to increase a farm’s profitability while also having the benefit of providing wildlife habitat. With the precision platform knowledge of the PACS and technological capabilities John Deere has installed into their software, growers can consult one of our Precision Agriculture & Conservation Specialists (PACS) as a partner by going to the Teams option in the Operations Center-Setup tabs. The next step is clicking on the “Add to Your Team” plus sign button, entering in an email, and granting access. Once the partnership request is accepted, PACS can immediately see the data. Watch a quick tutorial on adding a partner here:



Field Analyzer Beta in the Operations Center has a list of tools including analyzing custom areas within the field, customizing legends, and comparing variables. By being able to edit a legend, the red to green scale can be edited to represent that fields break-even points. The next tool that is useful is being able to analyze custom areas. You can select those net negative areas to define the yield specifically for that area, then select the other areas of the field to compare how the yield is affected by not farming those areas.

Here is an example of the results of an actual field analysis using those tools:
  Acres Yield Profit Per Acre
Overall Field 141.3 165 $154.81
Marginal Lands 11.2 105 - $85.00
Precision Conservation Field 130.1 170.3 $176.12
•    Profit per Acre does not include any conservation from the 11.2 marginal lands removed. 

The partnerships between Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, Granular, and John Deere set a path for success to be able to bring data proven conservation options using subfield profitability models.