U.S.: 5 Key Tech Trends That Will Impact Your Precision Ag Plans in 2021
For most of the end of the last decade, technology investment washed over the agriculture market like the incoming tide, writes Paul Schrimpf at CropLife. The deluge of products, offerings, and ideas did affect some change the precision ag landscape, but the rapidly receding funding from many (but not all) camps over the last couple of years has left core agriculture companies to digest and deploy the best of what the tech wave brought to the industry.
Despite the logistical, personal, and psychological challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic wrought during the 2020 crop season, retailers reported few truly difficult on-the-ground challenges in what was a largely solid season across the Corn Belt. Where social distancing was a larger issue, retailers leaned on technology to keep the lines of communication open with suppliers and farmer-customers.
From a new incoming administration to uncertainty in global markets, there are plenty of “X” factors that will come into play this year. But with a solid fall fertilizer season completed and farm income, despite the healthy contribution from Uncle Sam, on a largely firm footing, the 2021 season could provide opportunities to incorporate value-focused technology strategies into the crop plan.
Below are five technology trends to watch that could impact your short and medium-term technology and precision plans.
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Getting Beyond Ecommerce
The early days of Farmers Business Network’s emergence as a competitor for broker-level crop protection sales, followed by Nutrien’s summer 2018 announcement of investment in an integrated digital portal (with an internet-based ordering platform as a top priority) was, for many, a wake up call to start considering internet product transactions as a threat.
Responses to the trend included collective platforms like CommoditAg, as well as auction-style web offerings and white-label bolt-on solutions like AgVend, which has since shuttered the auction to focus on individual retail-centric commerce solutions. Towards the end of last year, Nutrien reported reaching $1 billion dollars in ecommerce transactions (which include orders placed by sales representatives on the farmer-client’s behalf).
The threat purely from ecommerce alone has waned, but 2020 ushered in a new benchmark for doing business and sharing information on digital platforms. Providing farmer-clients with information, access, and transparency on accounts, field work, and other key information has moved forward rapidly. And of course, retailers are in the mix with John Deere’s Operations Center and Bayer-Climate FieldView.
The large, integrated retailers are pushing hard on this front with proprietary systems, and enterprise software companies have or are moving in that direction. Recently, AgVend announced it’s moving beyond the transaction through what it calls the Grower Portal Ecosystem to bring together products and services under a single platform.
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