About: ScoutPro

DECATUR, Ill. — Is it Palmer amaranth, redroot pigweed or common waterhemp? Is that gray leaf spot or northern corn leaf blight? Is there corn rootworm pressure? What is the threshold for European corn borer?

Agronomists can quickly identify plant diseases, pest pressure and thresholds, but it may be more challenging for others because how closely field problems resemble one another.

A trio of Iowa “farm boys” developed a tool while in college to simplify crop scouting and move it away from notepads to iPads. The story of ScoutPro began when Michael Koenig, Stuart McCulloh and Holden Nyhus were enrolled in an Entrepreneurship in Agriculture class at Iowa State University in 2010.

What started as a project in a classroom has quickly grown into one of the most effective tools for scouting crops — and it’s about to get better.

Inspired by his “clunky” experience with carbon copies, hand-drawn notes and a pocket manual, Michael Koenig developed the concept for ScoutPro during an Entrepreneurship in Agriculture class at Iowa State University (ISU).

“With the carbon copies I scouted with it was pretty hard to pull a 300 page binder out and derive information from my hand-written notes…

After being selected out of 200 applicants, four companies went to battle  for the chance to be named Entrepreneur of the Year and win big to grow their budding business ventures.

In a “Shark Tank” style set up, each contestant gave a short pitch to four judges and answered six minutes of questions in an attempt to convince them that their company will bring the greatest improvement to rural America. If that wasn’t pressure enough, the pitches were in front of a live audience on the trade show stage, as well as streamed online for viewers across the nation.