Ag Tech Sunday - 30 yrs on - Agtech what has changed

By Scott Mckinnon - General Manager, Farmers Edge Australia

I reached a major milestone this month. It has been thirty years, to the month, when I completed by UNE thesis on 'Personal Computer as a Farm Management tool'. As a treat for followers and maybe an education for those who weren't around when the PC became a commercial product, I have scanned a copy for some light reading.

What has changed in those 30 years? Well, lots on the technology front of course! We have gone way passed the PC as the optimum on-farm computer technology. Some farmers have totally bypassed it. Technology is now in every machine cabin, in the sky and soon to be under every clod in your paddock. What hasn't changed is the time required for farmers to spend, specifically, entering data and doing analytics. We are still lacking in across the board digital literacy with vary degrees of experience and skills. These were the biggest barriers to adoption then, and to a large extent are still a barrier now. Tech companies are looking at every way possible to alleviate the need for data input, gathering and processing and try to make software and tool operation as straight forward as possible.

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My thesis was written at a time when most students still hand wrote their final paper and sent to an office assistant to have it typed, copied and bound. While I didn't have a PC of my own, in my final year we did get a faculty PC lab with about 4 blue screen PC's. I managed to save my work onto a floppy drive and have it locally printed on a laser printer, although the font choice was pretty limited.

At the time, Elders were the forefront of the online world, no internet just yet, with their dial up service 'Elderlink'. I picked a couple of emerging technologies I thought would help on farm adoption into the future, aka now. If you really count using Siri to pick your music, or for you to call home while driving a tractor, then 'voice recognition' was one. However I don't think it has been an earth shattering advance. The second is just building momentum now. Known in the 80's as 'expert systems', programs where computers can learn from data and programming and give insights into complex situations, was just a dream. We now see machine learning being used in modelling and decision support tools. Having had first hand experience with machine learning, it really is 'computer magic' that will definitely have a huge impact in the agricultural space in the years to come. While it operates mostly in the background, it will allow us to manage data, agronomic models and complex environmental situations very cost effectively and quickly.

So if your interested send me a message on LinkedIn with your email and I'll send you a copy. Have a read you may learn a little, giggle a little and see if you can predict where Ag Tech will go in the next 30 years!