IL Corn announces new PCM Connect

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — A new initiative designed to bridge the gap between farmers and partner companies who need their input will be rolled out in early 2026.

Precision Conservation Management Connect matches qualified farmers with vetted opportunities while ensuring farmers are fairly compensated and protected.

The program was announced at the Illinois Corn Growers Association’s annual meeting.

Laura Gentry, IL Corn director of water quality research, noted Connect is an expansion of the PCM program, providing farmers with low-risk, high-value opportunities.

“It is for PCM farmers. So, if you’re enrolled in the PCM program and if you are also member of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, then there is this additional, totally voluntary opportunity to get access to a platform,” she said.

“It’s essentially like a job board where there are opportunities to connect with other partners in agriculture, sometimes outside of agriculture, who are interested in engaging directly with some of the best farmers in the country.

“PCM Connect is providing an opportunity to do it in a way that allows farmers to get some income from it and also to have relatively low risk because everyone of those opportunities is going to be vetted by our staff.”

Gentry detailed the new program during a break at the ICGA meeting.

What are the goals of the program?

Gentry: It comes about from a need that we have seen where there are so many people who want to talk directly to a farmer about something. They want to understand why are you interested in this, or not interested in this? What has been your experience? They want to have on-farm research trials or, and this is a big one, they’re interested in farm data.

There’s a whole spectrum of attitudes about farmer data. Some farmers would never join PCM because they wouldn’t even trust us with their data. But there are others who would share their data for the right reasons, with the right people, for the right price. On the other end of the spectrum, they’ll say, “I’m an open book and I’ll share just about anything with you.”

For those people who are comfortable sharing information, but they want to know how the data is being used, they want to know that there’s some data use agreements and some restrictions around how the data would be used, and they see the value in the data, which there absolutely is value in their data, and they want to receive some of that value back.

This is an opportunity for them to get some money back for their high-quality data that they took a lot of time working with their PCM specialist to put into our portal.

What are the income opportunities?

Gentry: It will vary tremendously from where you have very low-dollar amounts for something like maybe doing a survey or providing an interview to some pretty high-dollar amounts where a farmer might be agreeing to, for example, doing on-farm research for a company that has a new product that they want to test out.

It’s a PCM program, but does it extend beyond the program’s footprint of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Nebraska?

Gentry: Anyone from anywhere in the country can post on to the board, but only the farmers who are in the PCM program within the states where we work are going to be able to access that.

But there are people from California, Oregon, all over the country, who might want to engage with a Midwest farmer.

When does this program roll out?

Gentry: The beginning of the year we’re going to start with our first partners getting listed onto the platform. That’s our goal.

How is the PCM program going?

Gentry: We have 660,000 acres now and over 600 farmers. We now have two regions in Nebraska and the Nebraska Corn Growers Association have announced that they would like to expand into two more regions. That will happen over a couple of years.

We just opened up a new region with the Kentucky Distillers’ Association in Kentucky bourbon country. That’s a very exciting opportunity.

We’ve started working with Kraft Heinz. Also, PepsiCo is a very earnest program in terms of they’re very authentic in their desire to work with farmers, to engage with them, to see positive on-farm incomes being effected by the conservation work that they do. PepsiCo has been a real joy to work with and it’s been great developing those relationships.

Anything else you’d like to add for farmers?

Gentry: Keep your costs low. That’s really the biggest thing. Be a low-cost producer in this farm economy. Do whatever you can to keep your costs low because there’s not much you can do on the price side of things right now.

Use the University of Illinois Maximum Return to Nitrogen for your nitrogen fertilizer applications.