https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-farmers-are-bogged-down-by-data-524f0a4d?
“We’re collecting so much data that you’re almost paralyzed with having to analyze it all,” said David Emmert, a corn and soybean farmer in West Central Indiana who works about 4,300 acres.
“When I’m planting my cornfield, I can tell you how well the spacing is from seed to seed just from sitting in the cab, but I don’t think that we’ve actually tapped into all of the information we can garner,” Emmert said.
The first generation of digital farming tools also wasn’t easy for farmers to use. Software was slow, interfaces were complex and difficult to manage. “The industry does need to step up a little bit on continuing to improve the customer experience,” said David Fiocco, a McKinsey partner focused on agriculture.
In recent years, big tech vendors like Microsoft, Amazon and Google have begun tailoring their cloud-computing, data and artificial-intelligence services to agriculture, bringing along expertise that could help address complications that have long plagued farm data management and analytics.
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Amazon and Google also see opportunity in the vast amount of agricultural data that will be collected, and are working with startups and agtech providers to gain footholds in the sector.
In March, Amazon Web Services partnered with the agtech startup Leaf, which provides connectors between data sources in different formats. AWS also works with John Deere, providing cloud services for the machinery manufacturer’s data services, the Amazon cloud unit said.
Last year, Google Cloud partnered with the climate-tech startup Agrology to help predict farm microclimates and process data. In January, its parent Alphabet spun off a company called Mineral from its X moonshots division; Mineral is developing a platform to aggregate agricultural data and apply AI to it. Agriculture’s “data-intensity” makes AI ideal for tackling the challenges ahead, and the technology will become the foundation for future farming tools, said Mineral Chief Executive Elliott Grant.
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At the same time, venture capital funding for farm management software, sensing and Internet-of-Things devices increased by 35% last year to $1.7 billion globally—the largest increase of any agriculture tech category, according to investment firm AgFunder.
The next big wave in farm innovation, largely known as “precision agriculture,” uses technologies like data analytics, AI, GPS and sensors to help farmers make data-informed decisions that could boost their yields with fewer resources.
The stakes are high. For crops like corn, winter wheat, soybeans and cotton, farmers who adopted precision agriculture technologies achieved significantly higher yields compared with those who didn’t, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found. For instance, in 2017, farmers using digital soil maps produced about 49% higher winter wheat yields than those who didn’t, the USDA said in a report this year. Faster adoption of such tools is also critical to meet the world’s growing demand for food and an increase in extreme weather conditions, experts say.
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The average American farmer is about 58 years old, resulting in an overall slower shift to adopting technology, said Vasanth Ganesan, a partner and co-leader of McKinsey’s agriculture technology sector. Nearly two-thirds of farmers still rely on in-person guidance from advisers and agronomists rather than solely software and tools, the firm found.
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Data privacy is a concern for farmers, too—some are reluctant to share detailed information on their farm’s operations with startups and agribusinesses, fearing those businesses could raise prices or otherwise monetize their data, said agribusiness analyst and consultant Shane Thomas.
Meanwhile, farms of all sizes are pressured by the higher costs of seed, pesticides and fertilizer, an intensifying labor shortage and adverse weather events. The country’s smallest farms have been increasingly driven out of business by larger operations, which can more efficiently use technology and pay for upfront investment costs.
Still, it’s possible the newer tech could help smaller growers keep up against their larger competitors, according to USDA researchers.
Jerry Seuntjens, a corn and soybean farmer in Kingsley, Iowa, who works about 2,200 acres, said farm management software has helped his farm—“a one-man show”—mitigate the impact of labor shortages and higher costs.
Iowa is in its third year of a drought, Seuntjens said. But technology has improved his per-acre yield by eight to 18 bushels on corn, and three to 12 bushels on soybeans.
“If I can gain more yield and not have to make an extra pass going across a field, or use extra equipment, why wouldn’t you?” he said.