Farm Data Analyst
The numbers seat inside a large operation, co-op, or processor field group
The yield monitor, the scale ticket, and the grower's memory will give you three different numbers — my job is to pick the one we're going to put on the contract.
Sits at the intersection of agronomy, finance, and operations. Pulls yield monitor data, as-applied records, soil samples, contract specs, and storage outturn numbers into one place and produces the report the operations manager, the co-op board, or the processor field staff actually reads. Reconciles what the grower said happened in the field with what the monitor recorded, the bin scale weighed, and the processor paid for. Builds the dashboards nobody asked for but everybody references three months later.
Embedded inside a 5,000+ acre operation, a regional co-op (CHS, Black Gold Farms, RPE, Wada Farms scale), or a processor field office (Lamb Weston, Simplot, McCain, Cavendish). Concentrated in Idaho Falls, Pasco, Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, Caribou ME, and the San Luis Valley. Mostly desk-based, with a few field days a month to ground-truth the numbers.
Data lives in eight places — Ops Center, FieldView, the storage bin temp loggers, the processor's outturn portal, the QuickBooks ledger, the agronomist's notebook, the irrigation district's water-use records, and a shared drive. Half the source files are CSVs with inconsistent headers. The grower swears the field made 425 cwt/acre, the scale ticket says 387, the yield monitor says 411, and now the analyst has to figure out which number goes into the contract reconciliation memo. Nobody wants the report until they want it yesterday.
Finding a 9-cent-per-cwt leak in storage shrink that nobody noticed for two seasons. A variety trial summary that actually changes the seed order for next year. The ops manager forwarding their dashboard to the lender without rewriting it. A clean tie-out between as-applied nitrogen and yield by zone that holds up to the agronomist's scrutiny.
Excel and Power Query daily, SQL (Postgres or SQL Server) for the serious shops, Power BI or Tableau for the dashboards leadership actually opens, Python (pandas, sometimes a notebook) for the messier joins, JD Operations Center API or CSV exports, FieldView exports, a SQL view onto the storage SCADA system if they're lucky. Subscriptions: Climate FieldView, Granular, sometimes Conservis or Bushel for the co-op-scale ones.
Quieter Jan-Mar (contract season reporting and last year's reconciliation). Picks up Apr-May with planting records and as-applied uploads. Steady through the growing season. Slammed Oct-Dec with harvest outturn, contract reconciliation, storage shrink reports, and the year-end summary the board sees. Late nights through November.
Career path
Ag economics, ag business, or ag systems degree from a land-grant (NDSU, Idaho, U Minnesota, Purdue, Iowa State) — often with a stats or data-science minor that's become more common in the last 5 years. Some come from a finance or analyst seat in another industry and got pulled in by a family connection or a co-op job posting. A growing slice came up through the precision-ag tech route and pivoted to analysis. Rarely a pure CS degree — the ag context has to be there.
Salaried, with a small bonus tied to the operation's or co-op's annual performance. Higher base at processors than at single-grower operations. Co-op seats sometimes pay a per-member service fee bonus. No commission, no equity — this is W-2 work with a 401k match.
Are you one of us?
PotatoFolk connects the people who touch potatoes on the way from soil to table. If this page describes you — or someone you know — request an invite.
Request an Invite →