Leveraging Data for Smarter Decisions – A.G. & K.J. Bain

Key Factors: 

• Data-Driven Decisions  

• Value in Digital Tools 

• Varietal and Field-Level Insights 

Fraser Bain is the Farm Manager at A.G. & K.J. Bain, a 4th generation family farm in East Lothian, Scotland.  

The two-man team of Fraser and his father run an arable rotation consisting of winter wheat, OSR, winter barley, malting spring barley and beans. Some land is also tenanted out for potato and veg production.  

A.G. & K.J. Bain have won the Best in Field Award 2024 for Best Newcomer, after joining our Analytics Platform in the summer of 2024 with pre-existing farm data and a solid understanding of its potential for aiding their business.  
 
They were selected for this award by Customer Support Executive at YAGRO Gabby Hart, who works closely with YAGRO’s farming customers to ensure their Analytics Platform is up-to-date and providing maximum value.  
 
Gabby visited Fraser to learn more about his operation and opinions on what benefits data analysis brings to a modern farming enterprise.  

This conversation is also available as a podcast: Listen Here.

This is my first trip to Scotland – What's your land like to farm up here? 

One problem here is drainage, with the drains having been dug a very long time ago, so in high rainfall events we struggle a bit. But there are some plus sides, like not having any blackgrass pressure compared to down south.  

However, due to all the rain, we have higher drying costs – so perhaps it all balances out.  

How’re you approaching agronomy here at A.J. and K.G. Bain? 

We’ve been using Frontier for a long time – Peter Forster has been our agronomist for about 10 years. It makes life easy when you find someone you get on with – you can pick up the phone when needed and trust their opinion.  

Jumping into your Analytics Platform, your 2024 winter wheat came in under Market Median at £61.44/t variable costs last year. So quite low costs...? 

We certainly had a low-cost year, but the yields were disappointing. It’s typical – when we bought at the right time and had the chance to turn a profit, we had a saturated winter and no spring. The weather was awful last year. Nothing bounced back. We were sowing spring crops at the end of April!  

Costs being low certainly helped our bottom line, but nothing can replace getting a good yield.  

And how did you manage to keep costs down on your wheat? 

Luck in terms of timing our fertiliser purchasing. We got the low end of the market.  

In terms of chemical, the late spring closed the spraying window – I think my T2 became a T2.5 - and it was clear we weren’t on for a bumper year, so you don’t want to sink costs in that case. You want to invest in crops that show promise of returning the investment. 

It was just one of those years.  

We keep our fertiliser and chem spend at the lower end of the market – we're not a high input farm. We don’t go mad throwing nitrogen at crops because in the past we haven’t seen the margins. It’s a risk. You spend money on fertiliser chasing a big yield, but if you don’t get the sunshine or the rain, then you lose money. 

Speaking of wheat – What's your favourite variety and why? 

We only grow soft feed and biscuit wheats. RGT Stokes has been our best for the last few years, it’s fairly clean and can yield quite well. We do swap varieties quite often - roughly every three years.  

We feel like varieties don’t last long anymore and break down quite quickly. For example, KWS Barrel went great for a few years but then quickly became a disaster for us. We move on from varieties that start looking like they’re going to need extra spray timings because of the extra cost that would bring.  

You’ve won our Best in Field Award for Best Newcomer to our Analytics Platform. What made you decide to get more involved with data analysis? 

We used to have the desktop version of Gatekeeper, and already used Greenlight Grower with Frontier... Since we do most of our grain marketing and inputs through Frontier, it made sense to save time uploading data by joining YAGRO.  

I always worked out our margins, but it was always in January when I had the time to do it. And that was too late because we’ve already sown crops for the next year.  

With YAGRO, I’ve got a running budget (using the Tracker Feature) which gets updated in real-time rather than waiting. So you can make more timely decisions with the information in front of you. And the less effort the better. 

Take us back to before your Analytics Platform. How were you tracking costs and making decisions?  

All through Gatekeeper. But the problem was doing it all manually. We just found it too time consuming.  

What I’d often find in the past was my records quickly becoming outdated too, whereas my Analytics Platform now is up-to-date.  

We’ve moved from using Gatekeeper for records and Greenlight Grower for chemicals – now all I need is MyJohnDeere, and everything else is through the Analytics Platform with Frontier.  

It’s a lot easier now, especially being cloud-based so I can access it on my mobile anywhere on the farm.  

Farmers can often rely on experience, but data can create an extra level of certainty. Have you found yourself approaching decisions differently since coming on board?  

Data certainly helps us see ahead and think about the next season.  

I was unaware of different variety-level performances in the past, we used to just calculate the margins at the crop-level. It would have been too much work to break down our wheat costs into individual varieties.  

But now the Analytics Platform presents that for me, which makes decision-making much easier.  

Also, we’ve been able to compare cultivation techniques by looking at field-level data, comparing fields which have and have not been ploughed. We’ve been able to see differences in margins and costs, which helped inform our decision to keep ploughing.  

Have you seen any other benefits data analysis has provided? 

Simply easier decision-making.  

The Platform enables me to make decisions quickly which used to take months to process and think about.  

For example, we grew a new wheat variety last season called LG Redwald, which yielded about the same as our other varieties. However, it was more susceptible to rust (despite its higher disease resistance score on the RL List) which came with a cost.  

We would normally wait a few years to decide on a variety, but the Analytics Platform showed us what we needed to know, and we didn’t bother with that variety again.  

What’re you hoping to gain from more analysis in the future?

We’re always looking for new ideas when it comes to rotation – although wheat and OSR seem to be the only crops which make profit. We need a wider rotation, to spread our labour requirements if nothing else.  

We’d like our rotation to pay for itself a bit better, so we’re trying out winter beans this year, and we’ll be using our Analytics Platform to gauge the profitability of our cropping changes.  

What would you say to other farmers who are considering an Analytics Platform for their farm?  

If you’re in a position where most of your invoices can be pulled automatically, that’s a lot less work for you. Just sending a few PDFs is way easier than calculating everything yourself.  

It also gives you peace of mind that you're not forgetting any aspects of your records. My Analytics Platform is linked to the advice my agronomist gives me and what I’ve applied – so nothing gets missed.  

I like the fact that the prices get updated once you’ve actually applied the chemical, in case I have to send any back or miss a timing.  

And what’s next on the horizon for AG & KJ Bain?  

Optimising costs and finding opportunities to streamline what we’re doing, removing any elements that aren’t making a profit, and stripping things back a little bit.  

With thanks to Fraser for his timing speaking with us. We’re delighted to have A.G. and K.J. Bain onboard and look forward to working together over the upcoming seasons. Congratulations to A.G and K.J. Bain once again for becoming a Best in Field Award Winner, 2024.