This Is My Story: Matt Eves

When we sat down to talk with Matt Eves, he was only five days into his new role as Customer Experience Lead for Climate FieldView^TM Canada. But he was already full of thoughts and ideas on the future of the platform in Canada and the farmers who use it. “I’m really looking forward to digging in from a data and analytics perspective to really understand our customers and our dealer network on how they're leveraging the product so we can better optimize the FieldView experience for our growers.”

Matt comes with that raw enthusiasm for agriculture honestly. Despite growing up in the city of Brantford, Ontario, he had agriculture in his roots. His mom had worked at the local Massey Ferguson combine factory and his father’s family was one of the first tobacco growers in Norfolk county. But it was a job interview and a slight misunderstanding that really set him on the journey he finds himself on today. “In university, I thought I was going to be an accountant. So, I’d applied for what I thought was going to be an accounting job during school. I showed up and it turned out to be for an assistant agronomist. I decided to go through with it anyways and yeah, they hired me. I haven’t looked back since.”

For the last ten and half years, Matt worked at John Deere in a number of positions and a number of places across North America but it was his first trip out west that sticks with him most. “I joked my first week of work, I got sent to Saskatoon for the Crop Production Show and then Brandon AG days. I had never been west of Ontario before and it was minus 45 degrees. So, it was a little bit of a rude awakening!”  

From those early days out west, to his last position as Division Sales Manager for Eastern Canada, Matt brings a wealth of experience as well as a deep understanding of farmers' needs in precision farming solutions and digital farming platforms. “From a Climate FieldView perspective, the technology needs to be easy. That's the biggest hurdle to technology adoption in agriculture. I truly believe, and one of the reasons I came to Climate, is that we provide an easy-to-use solution, both through data visualization as well as analytics all in an effort to help our customers make smarter, better decisions.” Pausing for emphasis, Matt took a moment before going on to say, “So whether it’s selecting the highest yielding corn hybrid from a field trial, or writing variable rate fungicide application prescriptions for canola, we want to make sure it’s easy and scalable for whatever that farmer wants to do.”

But ease of use doesn’t mean a thing if it doesn’t come with trust and a return on investment. And that’s something Matt is quick to point out as he looks to introduce more growers to precision farming and FieldView in particular. “Trust is a big factor in any business decision, but it’s really important to farm operations. Growing a crop or raising livestock inherently has financial risk due to the number of environmental variables that can impact yields, crop prices and ultimately their bottom line.  So, as a farmer, if I’m investing in spraying a fungicide on my crop, am I going to be able to see my return on my investment and mitigate risk of yield loss due to disease? Farmers and agronomist can utilize FieldView to build trust in those recommendations by quantifying the return on investment, by looking at yield differences on sprayed vs non-sprayed acres.”

Matt sums up this way: “It’s all about having the ability to go back to dollars and cents on the farm to see those yield differences or input changes, and with FieldView you can do that.”

And while Matt has his eye firmly placed on the future of FieldView, he’s pretty happy with the present too, including his new team. “Like any new job, there’s anxiety coming in, but the team has been fantastic. They're a tight knit group that really feels like a family. The amount of work that they've been able to show me they've done in the field over the last four or five years has been really impressive and I’m really looking forward to getting to know them better.” 

We look forward to getting to know you too Matt.

When Matt isn’t working to make FieldView the best it can be, you won’t find him on the couch. He met his wife of five years, Megan, when they were both playing basketball in university. And while they’re still into shooting hoops, their two-year-old daughter and three-month-old son definitely take up their time. As Matt points out with a smile on his face, “These days, with a new job, a young child and a toddler, I’m living on coffee.”