A pair of news items for you ag techheads (Yes, there are such people – more than you might think.):
#1 – The world’s largest chemical company announced it is seeking agricultural data services alliances.
BASF, which in late 2013 announced a partnership with John Deere, is seeing more green in tech services for farmers. Attempting to expand its $74 billion in annual sales, BASF last week. An executive last week told the Wall Street Journal that ag tech is it’s second-fastest-growing business unit, growing at 12 percent.
The firm in the fall plans to launch with Deere a web platform, initially for Canadian growers, to manage crop performance data, pesticide use and other "inputs."
With California’s acknowledged leadership regulatory complexity, it follows there will be an immediate market for compliance tracking.
Add this to the farmer’s mandate: Reduce my costs and increase my yields.
The major yield is not in crops but in data management coordinating high-tech tools and field apps.
Great big "apps" like driverless tractors. (And you thought Google was first.) A USDA friend of mine describes watching a farmer with a laptop drive two tractors simultaneously from his pickup.
Little bitty apps like water emitters at the base of plants that can now be individually programmed to read the stress of each plant and provide moisture and liquid fertilizer accordingly. Who knew?
#2 – Snail mail goes digital. Literally.
Little bugs are big problems for agribusiness. Used to be that a farmer would find a pest on his or her plants, and send it to a bug doc (entomologist) for identification. Ag pests can be pinhead-sized and difficult to ID – which determines the type and frequency of pesticides.
Used to be the farmer dropped that unknown bug in the mail. Process took 7-10 days, minimum.
There’s an app for that. Growers can use their smartphones to take photo and then send it off to a UC extension specialist for a precise and fast identification.
This can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars to a grower.
Two headlines that are further proof of the ag tech concept for California, one of the world’s largest, aggressive and most innovative ag tech ecosystems.
Our pro bono AgTech Roundtable meets this week, and we’re planning two initiatives in the San Joaquin Valley with our friends at USDA and West Hills Community College to speed the adoption of tech apps in the most fertile fields on the planet.
Stay tuned!
