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Farmers Business Network vs FBS Systems (MASA)
Both rows from the comparison table, set side by side. Nothing here is a recommendation; the facts are the vendors' own public statements, cited on each product page.
Capabilities
Farmers Business Network describes 5 of 10 capabilities (1 partial); FBS Systems (MASA) describes 1 (7 partial). They differ on ai assistant, accounting, grain marketing, inputs, labor & staff, weather, equipment data, elevator / buyer connection, mobile app.
| Capability | Farmers Business Network | FBS Systems (MASA) |
|---|---|---|
| AI assistant | ● Yes | ◐ Partial |
| Accounting | ○ No | ● Yes |
| Grain marketing | ● Yes | ◐ Partial |
| Field maps & agronomy | ◐ Partial | ◐ Partial |
| Inputs | ● Yes | ○ No |
| Labor & staff | ○ No | ◐ Partial |
| Weather | ? Unverified | ○ No |
| Equipment data | ? Unverified | ◐ Partial |
| Elevator / buyer connection | ● Yes | ◐ Partial |
| Mobile app | ● Yes | ◐ Partial |
Farmers Business Network: Norm is FBN's AI advisor for agronomy/farm-management questions (FBN calls it a proprietary LLM; site warns 'Norm can make mistakes'). FBN Direct sells crop protection, fertilizer, seed, animal health, feed and supplies direct-to-farm. FBN Crop Marketing lets members 'review local bids, manage contracts, scale tickets, and even receive payments' with grain buyers. FBN Finance offers land loans, operating lines 'of up to $5 million', equipment loans. Agronomy analytics are benchmarking/seed-performance insights from member data rather than a full field-mapping tool.
FBS Systems (MASA): Accounting: general ledger with cash, accrual, market-value and lower-of-cost/market bases, multi-entity consolidation, AP/AR, ACH e-payments, payroll (legacy FBS page), W-2/1099, activity-based cost accounting, Farm Financial Standards 'Sweet Sixteen' ratios. Grain marketing: tracks cash/futures contract status for crops and imports grain tickets from electronic scales/sales and Excel (not a bid/offer marketplace). Agronomy: crop production records (fields, inputs, applications, harvest), no field-map/agronomy imagery described. Equipment: 'machinery economics' pulls telemetry from machines and trucks (via acquired CropZilla) to compute cost per acre; no equipment brands named. Mobile: legacy FBS site says field production activity can be recorded via the Conservis Mobile App; no MASA-native app described. Labor: labor cost per acre tracked; payroll on legacy FBS page. AI: MASA sells a synced data replica that external tools (Power BI, Tableau, Claude) can query and runs 'MASA Labs' where producers build AI tools; no built-in assistant. Buyer integrations: packer settlements/carcass data and feed-mill imports; grain tickets from electronic scales.
Price, data and ownership
| Farmers Business Network | FBS Systems (MASA) | |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Farmer's Business Network, Inc. | MASA LLC (Mutual Agricultural Software Alliance), formerly FBS Systems, Inc. |
| Category | input purchasing | accounting-financials |
| What the AI does | Generic assistant — Norm answers agronomy and farm-management questions; FBN's pages do not state that it reads a member's own records. | Unverified — MASA/FBS pages describe analytics; no assistant could be confirmed. |
| Pricing model | Free | Contact sales |
| Published price | 'Membership is free.' 'Fees may apply for certain product and service offerings other than FBN membership.' (fbn.com, accessed 2026-10-25). Norm pricing not published. | Not published |
| Your data | FBN states 'all data provided to FBN always remains the data of the farmer contributing it' and 'FBN has never — and will never — sell member data', nor share it with seed or input companies; member data is anonymized and used in aggregated analytics. | Not published |
| Crops and regions | US and Canada; 117,000+ member farms, 187M acres (July 2025 release); row crops and livestock | Crop (row-crop), swine, cattle, dairy and diversified operations, multi-entity and farm-management companies; North America (vendor states ~3,000 agricultural clients across North America). |
| Farm size | Not published | Not published |
| Ownership | Private, investor-backed — VC-backed private | Producer-owned — producer-owned private (producer-owned: owners are farm operations, an accounting firm serving producers, and founder Norm Brown; 7 of 10 board seats held by farm operations using the software; vendor states it is not venture-backed) |
| What else they sell | Ag retailer / fintech — part of ag retailer/fintech | Farm software co. — farm-software-only company |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA (US) | Tipton, IA (US) |
| Built and supported | US-built; US and Canada support (online, phone, on-farm per fbn.com) | US-built, US support (remote team; vendor states service area is North America; 2025 newsletter lists weekly maintenance windows in Central Time) |
| Founded | 2014 | 1980 |
| Status | Active. July 2025 raise tied to expanding Norm AI into crop marketing, finance and risk management. | REBRANDED: The FBS Systems name has been retired; the software continues under MASA (Mutual Agricultural Software Alliance), a producer-owned LLC in Tipton, IA. fbssystems.com remains live with legacy product descriptions, and MASA pages still reference 'FBS accounting' integration and fbssystems.com email addresses. Date of the ownership change is not published on vendor pages. |
| Confidence | partially verified | partially verified |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-25 | 2026-10-25 |
Sources with access dates are on each product page: Farmers Business Network and FBS Systems (MASA). Request a correction.