The Precision Ag Revolution Continues

It’s funny how much “the first time” tends to mean to someone as they get older. I sometimes can’t recall what I just had for lunch, but memories of my first plane ride or seeing my first drive-in movie are as vivid as the day they happened.

Recently, I was also remembering the first article I wrote almost 30 years ago when just starting out in the trade magazine world. It was a story on computers, and I began that article by quoting 19th century abolitionist Wendell Phillips: “Revolutions never go backwards.” Of course, the reason I was thinking about this particular quote had nothing to do with the past, per se, but as I considered the here-and-now of today’s agricultural world.

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In terms of agricultural revolutions, almost nothing compares to precision agriculture. Since this technology-driven sector began taking hold in the 1990s, literally hundreds of new ideas and concepts for improving agricultural practices have been tried, refined, and adopted into the overall farming world. Reflecting this fact, this issue of CropLife® magazine contains two such examples: Our annual State of Precision Agriculture survey results and an article on GPS steering systems, one of the most popular precision ag technologies.

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But revolutions, no matter their good intentions, are rarely seamless. Often, there are hiccups in the technology being employed, cost-savings that don’t pan out quite as expected, and plenty of outright resistance (or rejection) of anything “new and different.”

I recently ran across an article online discussing some of these aspects of the precision agriculture revolution. “New businesses are springing up that promise to tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilize, or pick crops based on algorithms using data from their own fields,” said the story. “Their emphasis on reducing the use of chemicals and minerals known as farming inputs is a further challenge for an industry already struggling with weak agricultural markets worldwide.”

In response, several large crop protection suppliers have now jumped into the precision ag world with both feet, so to speak. Perhaps the highest profile example of this was Monsanto’s $1 billion purchase of Climate Corp. back in 2013. This and other similar moves have led to plenty of questions regarding who owns the vast amounts of data now being collected. Our company has attempted to provide some answers with a series of Precision Ag events over the past few years.

But now it’s time for something bigger. On October 18-20 in Phoenix, AZ, the PrecisionAg Vision Conference will debut. This two-and-a-half-day meeting is devoted solely to all things precision agriculture, hoping to provide some measure of understanding to this somewhat fragmented industry. For more information, I encourage you to visit www.precisionagvision.com.

No matter what side of the precision ag fence you are currently on, this revolution will continue to move forward. Shouldn’t your knowledge base, too?

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