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Hauling corn from field to silo on a truck, South Dakota farmer Chet Edinger is having a good harvest.

The mood of the 53-year-old, who also farms soyabeans and wheat on more than 5,000ha of farmland, has been boosted this year by a corn seed recommended by Farmers Business Network, a digital platform dubbed as a “Google for farmers”.

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Mr Edinger planted a variety that he had “never tried and never heard of”. Yet the gamble has given his farm “the best work we’ve [harvested] so far this year”, he says.

Growers in the US have traditionally relied on a distribution system where they had little access to comparable data and opaque pricing of everything from seeds to fertilisers to pesticides.

But the combination of falling prices amid bumper crops, consolidation of agricultural groups and the US trade war with China has forced them to seek ways to shore up revenues.

“Normally we would not even try a seed,” says Mr Edinger,