System integrators listen up – a significant, global niche industry has no cross-silo (Intentional pun.) communications or data management capabilities, and no device coherence.
The industry is led by California-based companies (Who else?), is essential to humankind and possesses ensured growth. You can see it from Silicon Valley.
True story: One of my friends is a Yolo County grower and bank director. Three guys walked into his field the other day, stopping him on his tractor – which didn’t help his mood – and asked him where they could invest $100 million&hellipFAST!
The trio was from Google.
An attractive industry to integrate, no?
Agricultural equipment is the industry, and it’s more than tractors with yellow seats. Of course, you knew that most farm equipment is well in excess of $200,000, right?
Mechanization is key to feeding the planet, which the UN estimates requires a doubling of production on the same amount of land. From drones to tractors to attachments (planting, weeding and harvesting) to sensors (which ride on plants, roots, dirt, emitters and equipment) to GPS to apps (weather, water and chemicals) – it’s called "precision agriculture."
Ag equipment sales were $38 billion in the US alone in 2012 and nearly doubled over the preceding decade, according to a new report from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
Overall, the ag equipment makers generate 376,000 jobs with an average salary of $67,000 and total economic impact, with multipliers, of $103 billion. Not gigantic, but enough to rank in the top 50 manufacturing industries.
It may be called precision ag, but none of the stuff really talks to each other. In fact, according to the USDA, most ag regions lack the broadband capacity to enable the communications.
Why is this important for system integrators? Farm equipment is fundamental to enabling the field-level technologies. Hybrid plants, for example, do best when stuck in the ground in a narrow window of time, and yields increase with narrow row spacing. A farmer can increase yields by 7% with the right GPS, sensors and hardware alone, our USDA friends say, but the network is isolated and not creating downstream efficiencies.
Early adopters do not abound. Monsanto and John Deere this year launched database services for farmers, but farmers, for some reason, don’t want to give their data away, and then pay for it as it streams back.
The growers have the cash – record food prices produce revenue. What they lack is system integrators willing to get their feet dirty.
Ag equipment report:
http://www.aem.org/MarketInfo/MarketIntel/WhitePapers/EconomicFootprint%2DAgriculturalEquipmentIndustry/
