4 Steps to a Smarter Farm

As technology continues to advance, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other tools are becoming integral to agricultural operations. With many tools already available — and many others on the horizon — it can quickly become overwhelming to determine where to start. Read on for a practical approach to integrating technology into your operation.

1. Determine business needs
   • Consider your business needs over the next one to three years. Identify specific problems or inefficiencies in your operation. Then explore AI tools that could potentially help to solve those issues. Starting with the end in mind will help identify the most opportunity for return on investment.
2. Do your research
   • Once you’ve determined your business needs, do your research. Look into different technologies and utilize land grant research to verify claims. Be wary of overhyped technologies that don’t provide the value promised. For this reason, the research and trials of land grant institutions and other trusted advisors is critical to making informed decisions. You may also want to look into grants and other incentives to facilitate adoption and offset high implementation costs.
   • Finally, make sure the systems you implement can be integrated within your existing operation and with each other. Data quality, integration and cybersecurity are critical for technology solutions to be effective, so you need to invest in systems that can consolidate data across technologies.
3. Implement an incremental approach
   • You don’t need a full-fledged AI strategy all at once. Focus on the small inefficiencies that have a high impact in your operations. Implement solutions in a business-minded manner, focusing on outcomes that show measurable return on investment. Build momentum by achieving little wins, and then the long-term AI strategy will emerge organically from those successes.
4. Stay informed
   • With the pace of change today, producers can’t take a once-and-done approach. They need to be thinking ahead and be aware of emerging technologies, so that investments made today can evolve with future advancements.

While no one can be sure what the future holds, one certainty is the pace of change is only going to accelerate. As futurist Jack Uldrich noted in his book, A Smarter Farm, “AI won’t put farmers out of work, it will put farmers who don’t leverage AI at a competitive disadvantage.” 

The AI-driven, autonomous solutions becoming available offer the potential to provide producers with the data and insights to cultivate with intelligence. So now’s the time to stay informed, assess your business needs and do your research to determine next steps for your operation.

Read more about these tools and how they can benefit you in the 2024 Summer Financial Partner here.