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County agronomy contractor reports yield gains, urges better data sharing and consideration of tiling and lease changes
Summary
e4 Crop Intelligence reported successful 2025 yields under its three‑year county contract, urged better as‑applied data sharing from tenants and recommended the county obtain tiling quotes and consider longer or consolidated lease terms to enable drainage investments.
Consultants from e4 Crop Intelligence told supervisors that the county’s four‑field farm contract produced solid 2025 results and that existing soil‑testing and fertilizer programs are working well, but that some pesticide and as‑applied GPS records remain incomplete.
"We have fertilizer on three of the four fields... everything's looking good on our end," said Jared Moser, agronomist for e4, summarizing 2025 operations. He said e4 received planting, soil testing and yield data for most fields but sometimes struggles to obtain GPS ‘as‑applied’ records from growers or retailers, which limits precise tracking of chemicals and inputs.
Supervisors and consultants discussed lease structure. e4 noted multi‑tenant complexity across four parcels makes data capture harder and recommended exploring a single‑grower approach or adjusted contract language to require submission of as‑applied records. Consultants also raised tiling as a high‑priority capital improvement that could materially increase yields for three of the four fields; they offered to solicit three tile quotes and advised the board to consider including tile timing and cost in future lease terms.
The board asked staff to collect sample lease language, seek tiling quotes from suggested contractors and bring back options in the summer before rebidding renewal in August/September. The county has renewed the e4 contract for the upcoming year and will discuss lease length and tile financing ahead of the next bid cycle.
