Ag Tech and Connectivity: It Matters More Than Ever Before
Machine connectivity has evolved from a “nice to have” to an absolute necessity as farmers embrace digital agriculture, or Smart Farming, in greater numbers.
“In rural America there are areas without connectivity and if that happens when we’re in a field the wheels simply stop turning,” Iowa farmer Laura Bloome said during last week’s World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in San Fransisco, California.
The Summit is held annually in the Bay Area – a hotbed of ag tech and specialty crop innovation – bringing together an eclectic array of ag tech innovators and entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, early-stage startups, and representation from the highest C-suite levels at global agriculture firms. Hot topics this year included:
- climate smart farming enabled by technology
- biological-based product innovations
- the decarbonization of farming
- generative artificial intelligence (AI)
- robotics
- digital transformation in row crops and specialty agriculture
Bloome, who also consults as an executive recruiter, appeared on a panel titled “The Connected Farm: Smart Machines Optimize Productivity” alongside Marc Kermisch, chief digital officer, CNH Industrial, and Joel Schroeder, director of business development, Intelsat, which is a global OEM provider of satellite corrections.
Kermisch echoed Bloome’s thoughts on the importance of connectivity to today’s smart farmer, adding “it needs to be a base component of any farming practice, and it needs to be a base feature” for any ag tech product.
Schroeder sits at the other end of the table, having spent his career working on penetrating hard-to-reach areas – many of which are intensely productive agricultural regions – with enhanced machine connectivity via satellite signals.
He says the recent John Deere-SpaceX partnership has heightened farmer awareness of satellite connectivity and what it can provide.
“We’re seeing a real change in how satellite (connectivity) is being considered versus where it started,” he says. “It’s becoming the more popular option and it’s being used for more than just to support precision (ag) data but also to monitor machine performance and preventative maintenance.”
Kermisch and leadership at CNH Industrial see satellite connectivity as an enabling, uniting force for farmers. It provides reassurance during the hectic production cycles of broad-acre farming that their operations are going to run as they should, he says.
“They need that connectivity to plant straight, and they also need it when spraying so they don’t run over crops and cause yield loss,” Kermisch added. “It is crucial to ensure the farmer can download the data, run prescriptions, and do that post-mortem analysis for the next farming mission.”
The act of collecting data itself is not an issue on Bloome’s crop and livestock operation. Moreso, it’s crunching the data coming off all the connected machines, implements, and sensors and uncovering the insights that help produce a crop more efficiently.
“Increasing yield is always important, but I look for profitability per acre,” she said. “Because our highest yielding field isn’t always the field with the best profitability.”
Advice for farmers
Schroeder advises farmers looking at satellite services to form partnerships with the large equipment OEMs – whether that’s at the local dealership level or even higher up the chain.
“By working with OEMs there is an opportunity to raise adoption rates of ag tech while lowering costs and making these technologies more accessible,” he added.
When it comes to adopting new technologies, Bloome is looking for products that help automate the often monotonous but necessary tasks in the production cycle, calling such innovations “a huge game changer for us.”
“We won’t have autonomous tractors running in our fields anytime in the next five years – it just doesn’t pencil out,” she said. “But the autonomous technologies that can free us up to focus on things like grain marketing or working on carbon credit programs, that’s where it starts to make sense.”
All three panelists agreed the recent influx of connectivity optimizing developments – whether it’s the recent Deere-SpaceX tie up or other satellite constellations – is critical to enabling the sensor connected “Smart Farm” of the future.
“There’s great opportunity for connected soil health and water management sensors, so the farmer can figure out when to plant based on optimized soil or weather conditions,” Kermisch said. “And we’re also looking at, are there ways to measure the efficacy of the human labor element – whether through the phones we all carry or other on-farm sensors – to help get labor staged and optimized?"
