Nebraska farmers, brothers, and now full-time business owners, Trent and Justin Mastny, jumped into the precision ag world without a long-term business plan. After implementing SWAT MAPS technology on their own farm, they realized it needed to become the core of their business model.

“We wanted to get started with this technology with the farm. As we mapped our first field, we saw that we could map all 2,000 of our acres and still be money ahead,” says Trent. “That’s how it all started. After planting season, we saw the verification and realized this is the only way to go.”

In 2021, JTM Ag was born after taking on a few seeding trials. Without a lot of brand awareness or familiar users in the area and no prior knowledge with SWAT MAPS technology, the Mastny’s went in completely blind and took an experimental approach to getting the company up and running.

“If we were going to start a business, we wanted to make sure this was the right thing to do,” says Justin Mastny. “Looking back, we have 10,000 acres now and it’s amazing to see where we came from.”

High-resolution agronomy like never before

The Mastny’s found SWAT MAPS technology to be the true foundational piece that was missing to make sound agronomic recommendations. Now, with years of data collected and analyzed, they are more confident than ever when making prescriptions.

“It’s been a big success in our area because the SWAT MAP Topography layer shows up clearly in our Dry-land soils,” says Trent. “You really see those differences in July and August when the crop is still green. You can walk a field and visually see the differences in crop stress Zone by Zone.”

“The in-season soil sampling and tissue sampling is taking off with our business as well,” says Justin. “We’ll take 3 soil samples, 6 tissue samples, and time them out throughout the growing season. We then go into zone 1, take a sample, then zone 8, take a sample, etc. It’s really cool because those are different yield zones and you can see how the nutrition tracks throughout the year. We have a 5 to 8% increase from a zone 1 to a zone 8 in all nutrient uptake based on tissue samples, so that validates what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

“Another thing is understanding how nitrogen moves through the field. With more in-depth soil sampling, we were able to figure out how much nitrogen is actually out there. We found that our zones 1 to 4 were deficient, so we’ll bump our rate there as well as add more sulfur where it’s dry, and then we can really back off and that’s putting more yield layers on top of the SWAT MAP to try and figure out what our limiting factor is,” adds Trent.

Time is money

While sharing his thoughts on how SWAT MAPS are helping pave the way in precision agriculture, Trent notes the efficiency found when providing quality and useful variable rate planting prescriptions in an extremely timely manner for customers.

“Farmers are looking to use and stretch every penny to grow a crop. With SWAT MAPS variable rate planting scripts, we can use the farmer’s dollars more efficiently to gain yield in areas that are capable and limit losses where there are challenges within that field,” he says.

With a business model based on the SWAT ECOSYSTEM, conversations with clients became a lot more thorough at JTM Ag.

“The attention to detail because of the SWAT MAP is what sets our company apart from other companies in the prescription industry, including the high definition scripts that we can create,” Trent says. “You’re getting more data with less soil samples than you are taking from 2.5 grids. It’s a way for us to really hone in on what’s happening. It’s important for us to spend the time walking the field with a client, because seeing those tangible differences is what truly sells it.”

“The weather can change, nutrition can change to a certain point, but the map always stays the same,” says Justin. “The map opens the door for everything.”

The SWAT MAPS Team is proud to work alongside passionate, independent agronomy service providers like Trent and Justin Mastny. Learn more about JTM Ag and what’s happening in their corner by reaching out or following them on social media:

X: @TrentMastny
Phone: 402-750-9218
Email: trentmastny@gmail.com

Farmers: visit https://swatmaps.com/partner-locator/ to find a SWAT MAPS Service Provider near you.

Service providers: Contact us for partnership opportunities.