Coined GROWver, the rover first was used at the co-op’s Innovation Summer Growver. It allows the cooperative to focus on implementing future-facing initiatives for Landus, including Innovation, the GROW Ag Data Locker and the GROW Solutions Center.

“We had fun giving this the playful name GROWver,” said Mary Harrington, spokesperson for Landus. ”This rover technology was brought into our Innovation Center to give our farmer-owners the opportunity to interact firsthand with one example of exciting ag technology of the future. Through our Innovation Center initiative, we worked with Google to expose our farmer-owners to not just this rover technology, but also to insights showcasing the future of data in agriculture and the increasing role data will play in our industry.”

Put simply, the rover looks at a variety of data points in the field to provide insight into pod count, bean count, canopy coverage, stand count, emergence and more. The cooperative used it in its soy test plots in Ralston this past year. It can scan a 330-foot-long test plot row in an estimated four minutes and snapped approximately 400,000 high resolution images of the test plot.

“This is just one example of the many innovation partners we worked with last summer, and will work with in future seasons, through our Innovation Center,” Harrington said. “We believe farmers should be at the center of ag innovation. Through our Innovation Center, we invite farmers to connect directly with emerging technology representing the technology that we categorize as Now, Next and After Next. By connecting innovators, thought leaders and tech startups directly to farmers, our goal is that farmers have better visibility to what’s coming and have the ability to help those innovators understand the real on-farm needs and challenges they are facing. When farmers get a seat at the table, maybe we can improve on-farm advancements with much greater speed and adoption.”

Right now, the rover technology wouldn’t work on a farm today and is best suited as a research-based tool. But farmers still embraced the opportunity to interact with GROWver and other technologies at Innovation Center events, she noted.

Other technological tools that have been showcased at those events include TerraClear’s automated rock picker and Rantizo’s drone sprayer.

Landus will be launching its Innovation Center expansion in downtown Des Moines at the Gray’s Landing commercial site this summer with a whole new roster of technology partners, Harrington said.

The company first launched this farmer-centric innovation initiative in June at an existing office in Ralston where farmers could connect directly with global innovation leaders to drive a more sustainable and profitable future of farming. In addition to the expanded Innovation Center, Landus plans to build out open-concept employee workspaces onsite, granting its remote workers a space to collaborate, foster connections and engage with Innovation Center events.