Data Solutions for Tailoring Agronomic Support to Meet Regional Needs - with Tami Craig Schilling of Bayer Crop Science

**Matthew DeMello** (0:16)
Welcome everyone to The AI in Business Podcast. I'm Matthew DeMello, editorial director here at Emerge AI Research. Today's guest is Tami Craig Schilling, vice president of agronomic digital innovation at Bayer Crop Science. Tami joins us on today's show to explore how localized data and generative AI address unique farming challenges across the plant-plant-grow-harvest cycle, enabling personalized product recommendations despite varying soil, practices, and weather conditions. Our conversation also covers practical workflow changes, such as using tools like ELI for zip code-based prompting to triangulate genetics, environment, and pests, delivering precise agronomic advice that augments human expertise, reduces input needs, and boosts crop success for farmers worldwide. Just a quick note for our audience that the views expressed by Tami on today's program do not reflect those of Bayer or its leadership, but first, are you driving AI transformation at your organization? Or maybe you're guiding critical decisions on AI investments, strategy, or deployment? If so, the AI in Business Podcast wants to hear from you. Each year, Emerge AI Research features hundreds of executive thought leaders, everyone from the CIO of Goldman Sachs to the head of AI at Raytheon, and AI pioneers like Yoshua Bengio. With nearly a million annual listeners, AI in Business is the go-to destination for enterprise leaders navigating real-world AI adoption. You don't need to be an engineer or a technical expert to be on the program. If you're involved in AI implementation, decision-making, or strategy within your company, this is your opportunity to share your insights with a global audience of your peers. If you believe you can help other leaders move the needle on AI ROI, visit emerj.com and fill out our thought leader submission form. That's emerj.com and click on be an expert. You can also click the link in the description of today's show on your preferred podcast platform. That's emerj.com/expertone. Again, that's emerj.com/expertone. Without further ado, here's our conversation with Tami.
Tami, welcome to the program, it's great having you.

**Tami Craig Schilling** (2:45)
Great to be here.

**Matthew DeMello** (2:46)
Absolutely. In our preliminary conversations we had for this show, it was really fascinating talking about the possibilities for local information, especially where it's so important among the unique challenges that farmers face when making decisions throughout the year. And one of the many places that we're going to start to see a much broader space for AI deployment, especially among companies like Bayer that are really leaning into agricultural science. And we really appreciate you being with us to talk about it. Just to kind of lay the groundwork for what we're seeing across the board, can you give us an idea, you know, even for a lot of our folks in the life sciences might not be truly aware of the unique challenges that farmers face when they're making those decisions from January to December. What do those look like?

**Tami Craig Schilling** (3:35)
Agriculture is a fascinating industry.
And so many people think about the industry as everyone involved is farming. They're raising a crop, they're raising a tree, they're raising a bush, they're doing something that is doing production. And the reality is many people in the agriculture industry, and actually in some parts of the world, it's extremely high percentages are not all doing the growing, but the folks that are doing the growing are the farmers themselves, or called growers, farmers, producers, can be called many names, planters in some parts of the world. But what happens is every year in every crop, they're the farmer who is planting a seed or tending a grapevine, or growing food, growing fiber. They are actively pursuing ways to grow that crop the best they can, in an environment that changes, whether it's rain, because it's all done outside. And the process is very similar. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, the process and the cycle for growing corn or growing cotton is extremely, extremely consistent from a process. And there are four steps that farmers take. They plan, plant, grow and harvest. And that may start at, that could start anytime during a year, but it really follows, if you think about a calendar or the 12-month cycle of growing crops, you might grow in South America, you might grow one crop of corn, two crops of corn in that 12 months. You might grow corn, soybeans and wheat. If you were in the US Midwest, you might, if you're in the orchards that are typically along the coasts, because that's really where a lot of fruits and vegetables grow well, you're going to make these decisions in this same order. It may just start at a different time, but it's really fascinating to think about the technology and the ways to apply the technology that's available today, not just in the labs and not just in the research fields, but really in the way that we provide farmers information about how to best use our products when they're growing those crops in that 12-month cycle.