Ag tech that may move the needle

What technology will the future bring? One session at the revived Grain World conference (previously run by the Canadian Wheat Board; this year run by FarmLink Marketing Solutions and Farm At Hand) in Winnipeg on November 15 attempted to answer this question, with a focus on agriculture in the next three to five years.

So what are the trends to watch for or become an earlier adopter on? The three panelists in the session outlined five areas with good potential.

1. AI (artificial intelligence)

Machines have huge room for improvement in their ability to respond to situations by themselves and adapt to dynamic situations just by ‘learning from past experiences or likely outcomes’. This concept of machinery reasoning – making the most suitable decision based on all the given information – is essentially mimicking the human brain.

If you think this may take more than a few years to achieve, Chris
Foster, small grains production systems manager from John Deere, says the company he works for already has a combine that makes adjustments on the go (which people can still override, if they want), adapting to field variability. He doesn’t think autonomous machinery, which will work well with AI, is too far away either.

2. Satellite imagery in real-time

Instead of this just being a ‘post-mortem’ tool to assess fields at the end of the year, Patrick Crampton, chief operating officer for Farmers Edge, thinks that satellite imagery will soon provide the opportunity to monitor your field in real-time throughout the growing season, providing information on in-season decision making. For example, imagery could identify the amount and location of weeds and combine that with crop-stage information to allow farmers to make more accurate decisions regarding herbicide applications.

3. Digital grain marketing

Lyle Ehrmantraut, president and CEO of Ag Exchange Group, foresees more and more grain marketing being done online with help from well-designed programs, such as the CXN360 platform that his company offers. By giving growers real-time access to all the grain buyers they are interested in, growers can have more marketing choices, more freedom and transparency, a greater ability to make the best decision and the convenience of selling grain from their phone.

4. Precision use of data

Foster says farmers can expect improved data quality and increased adoption of data-driven precision agriculture. This will lead to even more collaboration between farmers and their crop advisors, he says.

With the increased amount of data collected, Foster says growers may want to make sure they are cognizant of data security. Finding a trusted partnering company to work with is very important before handing over all the farm data. Sharing data with a competent, trusted source can be quite beneficial, especially when data pooled or aggregated with other data can start to show clear best practices.

5. Decision agriculture

Crampton uses the term “decision agriculture” to describe another big trend going forward. Increased use of predictive models will help farmers make more-informed decisions.

Programs like eScout, for example, already help combine input data with known information (ex. thresholds to follow) to produce suggested actions for farmers. New weather models are continually better at predicting and detecting conditions – such as inversion warnings for growers planning to spray their fields.

Improved predictions may also improve efficiency by alerting farmers when they need to stop and address machinery maintenance issues before they turn into breakdowns. Crampton pointed to the company UPS which already uses a similar technology to predict when a delivery truck breakdown is likely to happen and then preventing it (and thereby also increasing efficiency within their operation). Because it will require significant amounts of data to increase the accuracy of these models, they should become more accurate and therefore more helpful as data accumulates over time.

How will this all translate?

Thankfully all of these high-tech advances are expected to be developed with user-friendly interface platforms, similar to cellphones, so you won’t need to be a computer programmer to run your drill.

Foster also seemed confident that technologies wouldn’t price themselves above what a farmer can afford – as long as the increased returns to the farmer from this technology is factored in. That said, he advocates for farmers knowing their production numbers in order to make the best economic decisions.

In addition, with all the websites and programs to compare products (including brands, featured qualities and prices), it is now quicker and easier to compare dealerships and companies.

So how can you be ready for the future?

Know your numbers. Figure out which production values you don’t know and start collecting them. Collect and calculate input costs, other costs, yields, quality factors that influence price, and gross and net returns each year, until you have a five-year rolling average. This becomes a comprehensive database for decision making.

Track decisions. Write down some (or all) of the big production decisions you made this year. This may include fertility information, conditions that led to the decision to spray or not, the type or lack of tillage you used, etc. It may be a surprise how many profit-influencing decisions you make in a season.

Assess those decisions. What did you learn from an in-season or after-
season assessment of each major decision? Don’t dwell on any missteps, just remember these lessons in future years.

Be inspired. Continue to be inspired by new technologies (especially those outside of agriculture) that could be applied to improve your operation.

Be creative. Continue to be creative with your problem-solving skills as you manage challenges each year.

Try one new thing. Try at least one new thing each year. This could be straight cutting one quarter section of canola, flying a neighbour’s drone, scouting every field every week for at least one year, running a variety trial, buying a drop-pan for your combine or something else.

Talk it up. Describe (or even brag about) your improvement to at least one other farmer and ask them what new things they’ve tried recently. You just might make each other a bit more profitable in 2018!