There's a drawer in your shop.

Or a folder on your desktop.

Or a box of USB sticks you swear you'll organize someday.

Buried in there is yield data. Five years of it, maybe ten. Every harvest, you pulled the card out of the monitor, looked at the map for thirty seconds, and put it somewhere "safe."

The soil tests are somewhere else, probably a binder from your crop consultant that hit the shelf the minute the recs got emailed to the co-op.

Nobody's opened it since.

Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: most of us have no idea what to do with any of it.

We've been told data is valuable. We've been told precision ag is the future. We've spent real money on yield monitors, GPS, and variable-rate controllers.

And then the data just ... sits there. Because nobody taught us how to connect the dots.

The co-op doesn't have time. The dealer who sold you the monitor moved on three years ago. The university extension guys are writing papers, not prescriptions.

And we're sure as hell not going to raise our hand at a meeting and say, "hey, can someone explain how to actually use this stuff?"

That's not what farmers do. We figure it out. Alone.

Or we don't figure it out, and we quietly move on.

I've been quiet for two months. If you noticed, thanks for noticing.

I was thinking about what True Grit Agronomy actually is when it grows up. The whole thing, not just the next newsletter.

I finally know.

Over the last few weeks, I've been building a system.

The short version: I’m helping farmers turn that drawer full of data into actual decisions.

The longer version:

Your yield data becomes real zones. Not arbitrary grids or elevation maps dressed up as zones.

Performance maps matched to soil samples that explain why one part of the field works and another doesn't. Soil biology becomes trackable. Year over year. So you can see if what you're doing is working.

Fertility becomes a system, not a guess.

By year four, you're not paying me for hunches. You're paying for decisions backed by your own numbers.

That's the system. I'm not doing it alone. There's a partner on the execution side. More on that soon.

I talk a lot about mental health in farming. Usually, that means the big stuff. The anxiety. The isolation. The weight of decisions that could bankrupt you.

But there's a smaller version of that weight, and I think it's everywhere: the quiet shame of not knowing something you feel like you should know.

Someone messaged me recently. Asked how to actually understand his soil tests. His consultant drops off a binder and sends the maps to a local retailer, and that's the end of it.

He trusts the guy because, well, how do you even question it?

I've been there. First consulting job, I sat down in front of a fertility spreadsheet, and it might as well have been written in a foreign language. Nobody taught me either. You're just expected to know.

And if you don't? First thing you hear is, "What are you, stupid or something?"

That's half the problem in this industry. CEC. Cation ratios. What the hell WEOC even stands for. Most of us learned about fertility from the guy selling us fertilizer. That's not a knock. It's just reality.

I'm not here to make anyone feel stupid. I've been the guy who didn't know. Still am, in many areas.

But there's value in someone who'll explain the why behind the numbers. A farmer who understands why just makes better calls.

Here's the ask:

I need five farms to pilot this system in 2026. Maybe four. Definitely not six.

Not customers. Partners. People who want to build this with me and learn along the way.

Sound like you? Reach out. Reply here, scan the QR below, send a DM. Carrier pigeon, if that's your style.

Tell me about your operation. Tell me what's not working. Tell me what you wish you understood better.

I've got one spot filled. That leaves four.

The co-op is selling fertilizer. The university is publishing research. The retailers are moving product.

I'm building something different. A system that learns from your ground over time. Fertility is one output. But the same data also answers other questions. What seed to put where? Whether that drainage project is paying off. If that rental is worth the price.

The co-op doesn't have time for this. You don't have time for this. But I do.

And I'd rather build it with five farmers who give a damn than pitch it to fifty who don't.

2026 is baby steps. 2027 is when we scale.

You can't improve what you don't measure. I know, I know. A million people have said it. Doesn't make it wrong.

And you shouldn't have to figure it out alone.

If you want to be part of building something from the ground up (literally), let's talk.

—Adam

P.S. Not in driving range? I can still do a second look on your soil tests remotely. If you've got a binder full of numbers you don't understand, reach out anyway. We'll figure something out.