Ag Tech Sunday - There is no such thing as the AgTech Sector

By: "Farm Tender" News
Ag Company News
Apr 28, 2019
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By Nick Bryant, General Manager - Australia at Farmers Edge.

“I’ve heard they have some great satellite imagery” “Are they the crowd with weather stations and moisture probes?” “I think they’re doing some great stuff with blockchain but I don’t really know how all that works just yet” “I just want one of these tech crews to come up with a whole farm system that’s automated and easy to use” “I need some contacts in the farming sector so I can proof out my tech concept”

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Sound like familiar conversation points with your farming contacts, agribusiness colleagues, research peers or friends in the start up environment? It’s almost impossible to think that anyone with a meaningful interest in food production and agriculture hasn’t been part of a discussion along these lines in the past year or so.

Many farmers and members of the more traditional bases of agribusiness that I talk to have very little understanding of who is developing their next ag technology solution or how this is done. In a similar vein, many who are close to the great work underway in technology improvements for agriculture can often see the traditional farmer or agribusiness base as a bit out of reach and the search for good farming contacts to test their ideas with is often high on their list of priorities.

This void seems to be closing though and ongoing work by private sector groups and the R&D framework will hopefully help to close it further.

In the meantime, a simple reality remains. Anyone who focuses their work in AgTech or digital agriculture is part of the DNA of agriculture and agribusiness in the same way that all of the industry’s great entrepreneurs and innovators have been before. If you are a software engineer writing code for a broadacre decision support tool, you are in the business of agriculture.

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Likewise, any farm business operator who is committed to their long-term success is compelled to work with the unstoppable tide of technology advancements. The notion of data wealthy farm businesses becomes more and more real as each software development sprint cycle passes.

Many aspects of farming are no easier than when Dwight D Eisenhower delivered his widely used quote to Bradley University in 1956. Regrettably, the synthetic farmer he referred to back then still flourishes to this day, often in a much more sinister guise. But thanks to advances in technology, Eisenhower’s well-worn plough could now be a pixel and being a thousand miles from the cornfield is no barrier whatsoever to knowing exactly how a farming operation is performing.

Agriculture and its technology advancements are one in the same and there is no such thing as a digital agriculture or ag tech sector that exists in isolation to the main game of producing, processing, distributing and marketing the worlds food base. When it all boils down, there is really just a set of primary industries that are utilising newly available technology as they never have before.

No technology solution can automatically adopt itself. It takes smart, dedicated, hard working people who are prepared to test new ground, change business behaviour and take a punt to develop these kinds of products, systems and services. And in order for these solutions to be taken up, a similar profile of consumer is needed to adopt and use them in their daily business environment.

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The successful uptake of technology is no different to that of any other product or service in agriculture, it can’t happen without solid business relationships between innovative, focused entrepreneurial suppliers and farm businesses that take a similar approach.

I’m really looking forward to leading the Farmers Edge effort here in Australia. Our team is taking the opportunity to reflect on what has worked well for us in recent years and what hasn’t, with the balance firmly in favour of the positives.

As we reset our approach to the delivery of some of global agriculture’s most exciting technology solutions, we are looking forward to introducing some powerful new features for the broadacre industry as they come online in the weeks ahead.

We have some great strategic partners in Nufarm and CNHI plus a diverse, deep and highly unique set of skills across our Australian and North American teams that support our work here.

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Culture counts for a great deal and it will be an enjoyable challenge to work with them to deliver some positive changes to farm businesses over the journey ahead of us.