Precision Agriculture Expert Joins Independent Ag Information Management Company to Develop New Tools for Decision Making

MEMPHIS, Tenn., — Terry Griffin, PhD, has joined CrescoAg LLC as Vice President - Applied Economics. Griffin will join the company focused on developing new products that will help farmers utilize existing data from yield monitors and other precision ag equipment to make better decisions for their operations.

Griffin joins CrescoAg from the University of Arkansas where he was a professor of row crops economics, extension specialist and team coordinator of the Working Group on Precision Agriculture. Terry specialized in utilizing spatial technologies to improve agricultural production systems and quality of farm life. He also served as farm management and spatial technologies specialist for the University of Illinois Extension.

"We're excited to have Dr. Terry Griffin join CrescoAg. He is a leading expert in helping growers make the most of their precision ag data, and brings a combination of academic excellence and real-world experience to our product development team," said Charles Michell, executive vice president of CrescoAg.

Griffin has also served as a consultant to a number of companies and has been invited to deliver more than a dozen keynote speeches and workshops across the U.S. and Canada each year. His practical agricultural knowledge stems from his involvement in his family's row-crop farm that is still in operation in northeastern Arkansas.

"I look forward to developing techniques for practical use that have, up until now, been reserved for research and academic purposes or otherwise only existed in a theoretical sense," said Griffin. "It is exciting to be a part of a group that shares my passion regarding precision agriculture data analysis and the desire to see our decision tools being used by real-world people to make real-world decisions."

He earned his bachelor's degree in agronomy and master's degree in agricultural economics from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. in agricultural economics with emphases in farm management, production economics, and spatial economics from Purdue University. While at Purdue, he coordinated the Top Farmer Crop Workshop and organized the whole-farm linear programming service and introduced the service of yield monitor data analysis to participants.

Griffin is a certified crop advisor (CCA), member of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, and a charter member of the International Society of Precision Agriculture. He received the 2010 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence for Researcher/Educator from Meister Media, and was the 2002 National Winner of the NASA GIS and Remote Sensing Decision Support Seminar and the 2003 National Winner of the NASA Excellence Award in Remote Sensing and Precision Agriculture.

CrescoAg's products and services utilize data from tools such as field mapping, soil sampling, record keeping, automated crop monitoring and "whole farm" research plots. The data generated by these tools are mapped, stored and easily accessible. CrescoAg will accept data from all major hardware or equipment brands, translate it, store it and make it compatible with other systems. The aggregated data will allow for community analysis and benchmarking at the field and farm enterprise level. The company's products will primarily be available through retailers and crop consultants throughout the MidSouth and Southeastern U.S.

CrescoAg LLC is an agriculture information management company based in Memphis, Tennessee. The company's suite of products and services will allow retailers and consultants to improve efficiency in their own operations, offer new services, and introduce decision-making tools to customers. CrescoAg's focus is on providing resources that will make data from precision agriculture more practical, powerful and profitable than ever before.