Agriculture, forestry and fisheries / Agricultural technology services
Bayer Crop Science: Supporting agricultural advisory staff
- Company
- Bayer Crop Science
- Country
- Germany
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
Bayer sales teams and crop specialists in the United States had to answer farmers' agronomy and product questions quickly and accurately. AgTech Breakthrough, which judged the award, noted that accurate agronomic knowledge is the most valuable tool a grower has, but it is not always within reach at the moment it is needed. It explained that information matched to a particular time, place and season matters especially.
Technology and data
E.L.Y. is a system that puts a frontier large language model on top of an agentic generative AI architecture. To this it joins Bayer's agronomy data, field trial results and product label instructions to produce answers that fit the context. It uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to match answers to the region, the crop and regulatory requirements. Staff ask in natural language through a cloud tool used on mobile and web. Its modular structure lets the user experience be varied, and the model is small enough to run on edge devices.
Results
Bayer said that by its internal measure, response time to customer questions improved by 60 percent. Staff reported saving up to four hours a week. Bayer explained that by sharing work with an AI colleague, field staff can return thousands of hours each week to more valuable customer service and activity. E.L.Y. was named AI-based AgTech Solution of the Year at the AgTech Breakthrough Awards.
Limits and open questions
The 60 percent and the weekly hours saved are Bayer's internal measure and staff self-reports. They are not verification that crop yields increased.
Sources
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.