Working with growers and PCAs across California, I’m constantly reminded of just how much complexity they manage every day. They are making agronomic decisions, monitoring pest and disease pressure, managing water, preparing for frost, writing recommendations and staying on top of some of the most demanding compliance requirements in agriculture.
That’s why I’m proud to work for the Semios Group, the only independent agtech provider with four separate offerings that each help with a different part of this workload: Semios, Agworld, Altrac and Greenbook.
You don’t need to use all four. It’s better to start with the challenge in front of you and look at where technology can remove work, provide better information or reduce risk in your operation.
Seeing what’s happening in the field: Semios
Pest pressure, canopy conditions and soil moisture vary from block to block, and every PCA recommendation depends on knowing what’s actually happening out there. For California specialty crop growers and PCAs, that’s where Semios helps. Pheromone-based mating disruption is a core part of the offering, managing key pests by disrupting their mating cycle as part of an integrated pest management program. Automated pest monitoring and modelling give PCAs better visibility into pest pressure to inform treatment decisions.
In-canopy weather monitoring shows the conditions crops are actually experiencing, supporting pest and disease management and day-to-day operational decisions. For water management, Semios brings together soil moisture monitoring, irrigation activity and other field-level data, so growers and their PCAs can understand what’s happening below the surface and make more informed irrigation decisions.
The value isn’t simply collecting more data. It’s putting relevant field information in front of the grower and PCA so they can use it in their decision-making.
Turning decisions into recommendations, records and compliance: Agworld
Once a decision is made, it still has to become a recommendation, reach the right people and meet California’s compliance requirements. PCAs can write recommendations in the office or field and share them with growers and applicators, so everyone is working from the same information throughout the season.
Agworld can validate recommendations against applicable California requirements, capture adjacent-site information and connect with CalAg to submit NOIs and Pesticide Use Reports without re-entering the same information. For growers, those records become a central source for what’s planned, what has actually happened and what inputs have been used.
The result is a more connected, collaborative workflow: from the agronomic decision, to the recommendation, to what was actually applied in the field and ultimately recorded for the operation.
Taking some of the work out of frost nights: Altrac
Anyone who has managed a California orchard through a frost event knows how quickly a long night can begin, and how much driving it takes to check machines across multiple blocks or ranches. Semios’ in-canopy frost monitoring gives growers field-level conditions such as temperature, wet-bulb temperature and inversion strength to better understand frost risk. Altrac then helps put that information into action, letting growers remotely turn wind machines on and off, configure automatic start and stop behavior and monitor equipment status. That can mean fewer unnecessary trips during a frost event and quicker confirmation that equipment is operating when it’s needed.
Finding crop protection information quickly: Greenbook
Researching products shouldn’t mean digging through labels. Greenbook is already familiar to many PCAs and agricultural professionals, and for more than 35 years it has provided crop input label information to farmers, agronomists, retailers and crop advisors. What makes it useful day to day is the ability to turn product labeling into searchable information. Users can research products by crop, pest, active ingredient and manufacturer, then find what they need without starting from scratch every time. We’re now building the next generation of the Greenbook experience, and you can try it yourself. Create your free account at Greenbook.net and explore the new Greenbook today. Create your free account at Greenbook.net and explore the new Greenbook today.
Start with the problem you need to solve
What excites me about having Semios, Agworld, Altrac and Greenbook within the same group isn’t simply having four different technology offerings. It’s being able to start with the challenge a grower or PCA is trying to solve. None of these tools replaces the experience of a grower or PCA. The goal is to give them better information, reduce repetitive work and make it easier to act on the decisions they’re already responsible for making. If you’re already using one of our products and want to understand what else is available, talk to me or one of my colleagues at the Semios Group. We’d be happy to look at your operation, understand where your biggest challenges are and show you where the rest of our portfolio might fit.
