Picking Up The Pace

Fast Tracking Technology Adoption

What needs to happen to accelerate the short term adoption of technology in the agri-food market? Better apps? Next gen farmers in key management roles? Commercial or government compliance? Assistance from tech savvy crop advisors? How about all of the above with some additional effort on the part of the technology providers?

KISS!

A better application can be a lot of things but clearly simplicity will be a key driver for incorporating systems or hardware into the fabric of the American farm. If the “on boarding” process is difficult and the “widget” or “app” is saddled with complexities it will be hard to find the necessary commitment on the part of growers to navigate a steep learning curve. Interpretations of the data or the act of turning that data into informed decisions needs to be straight forward and obvious. Of course there has to be a clear value to be received in using the new tool. More on that issue later.

Farming as Lifestyle

As noted in a previous discussion the average age of growers is about 56 years old today. What I failed to point out is that farming is less a vocation and more of a way of life. Most farmers don’t retire, they expire. In some cases more senior members of the management team may stand in the way of the incoming CEO who might be advocating a change in the growing methods or practices that have been deployed over the years.  They might be tried and true but are they, in effect, “best practices”?

Comply or Else

Nothing forces change more rapidly than compliance. When the choice is to continue farming or run the risk of being assessed fines, threatened with business closure or, worse, having a key buyer discontinue their relationship with that business, then change will occur. Sure records are kept in order to better measure and manage but it doesn’t hurt that government regulators are requiring the official reporting of activities that might include pesticide and nutrient usage on the farm. Using technology to help automate that reporting is a no brainer and minimizes the impact on the business in terms of risk, time, effort, hassle and cost. Not many want to admit it but that same information can be used for making better decisions regarding the effectiveness of various crop inputs and cultural activities.

Every Day Low Prices

Government is not the only compliance enforcer. Buyers, whether processors or packers, are “asking” for more information about the products that they sell. This may be coming from consumers or investors by way of grocery retailers or food service providers. Companies like Walmart, the gorilla in every ag and food manufacturers’ conference room, are demanding more information from their suppliers to substantiate their own claims on sustainability. It doesn’t do any good to say that they are environmentally sustainable in their own business practices if the products that they sell are not in compliance with the real or perceived laws of Mother Nature. These companies are simply responding to the pressures from NGO’s, consumers and their investors and, in turn, turning up the heat on the left hand side of the agri-food supply chain.

A Little Help from Your Friends

Growers will require an enormous amount of assistance to incorporate new technologies into their day-to-day farming operations from those people they consider to be their trusted advisors. These agronomists, soil scientists, entomologists and a host of other “ists” are the key to migrating farming towards science and technology-based decisions. The key is that while the systems, devices, sensors, controllers, models, analytics and apps improve over time and deliver increasing value to the grower, it is the people who embrace these new tools as a requirement for improving their own services that will increase the velocity of change in production agriculture. Conversely, these people will be fairly compensated in order to attract the best and the brightest minds to an industry that will need top performers for future success. That is, growers will need to pay for these services.

I’m From Missouri – Show Me!

Something that needs to happen in order for agriculture and food processing to experience a true technological revolution is that same critical step that has been ignored for the last 30 plus years. PROOF OF VALUE. Every high tech company in the agri-food market sector has a whole host of, what they consider to be unique, “Value Propositions”. And these are just that, proposed value for their products and or services. And they are not unique. Here is a list of such VP’s that each and every ag tech company promotes to their buyers:

·        Increase yields

·        Optimize inputs

·        Enhance quality

·        Increase profits

Now there may some variation on these propositions but they are pretty much the same even if one includes saving time or reducing costs (optimize inputs and increase profits).

Many of these new products and services probably deliver on all of these key points. Anecdotes and intuitive thinking may lead us to believe in how a “widget” or “app” returns real dollars on the original investment. Case study videos may put us face-to-face with growers who fall into the excited early adopter category in our beloved “curve”. Those ag producers in the bigger part of the bell-shaped graph may need more proof, however. Who could blame them?

When technologists come to the realization that they can move their products faster and with an increased volume simply by proving the value of their offerings they will have a problem that every company wishes that they could have – demand will exceed their ability to deliver it.