But they’re coming soon, so choose wisely.
By Aaron Secrest, co-founder of DGE,Inc
I don’t know anyone who thinks it would be “smart” for farms to be run wholly by technology. I don’t know a single farmer who believes that digital data can provide “perfect knowledge” about the complexity of agricultural systems. I’ve never met an agronomist who thinks that a corn field should be run entirely by deterministic prescription plans driven by data that retailers are able to harvest off the farm. No-one seemingly wants top-down, technology-driven agriculture. It would be dumb, not smart and everyone knows it. However, here we are spirally directly down its path.
It is also evident that “bottom up” innovation is clearly not enough. Few farms could or should invest in building the technologies they require for it to be economically feasible. Which is why partnering makes so much sense when it comes to Ag technologies. In order to succeed at scale in agriculture moving forward, we all know we need to embrace digital technologies. However, picking the “right” technologies to invest in is a much harder decision to make but an increasingly important one. Picking what “data” to share and who to share it with, is getting harder and more complex daily. Given how hard it is to sort through, is it any wonder why so many farmers throw their hands up and just avoid it altogether? No, it’s not hard to imagine why farmers are less than enthused by your new “platform” that now requires them to take the data from their spreadsheet and add it to yet another place.
At DGE, we work exceedingly hard to cut through the b.s. and help our members gain a clear understanding of who we are, what we are about, and the technology behind our products and others. Most digital technologies are not all that complex and anyone who cannot clearly explain how they work either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they’re hawking some magic beans. It doesn’t have to be all smoke and mirrors. At least that is what we believe and if its something you believe in as well, we would love to talk with you.
