VISION Conference Brings Reality of Ag 4.0 to Attendees
The 6th annual VISION Conference was another great success with more than 165 engaged attendees eager to learn what the future has in store for agriculture.
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The event kicked off on Jan. 17 in Glendale, AZ, with a welcome from Joe Monahan, President and Chief Operating Officer of Meister Media Worldwide.
“Our goal with the VISION Conference is to bring together a broad mix of voices, perspectives, and capabilities that are driving change across the food value chain,” said Monahan. “It’s really looking into the future of ag tech.”
Renee Targos, AgriBusiness Global Editor, and Lara Sowinski, CropLife Media Group Editor, served as the moderators for this year’s conference, with the theme Harnessing the Power of Agriculture 4.0 – Turning Innovation into Reality.
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It’s all about where we are going next. John Teeple, Global Partner Leader in Agriculture with Amazon Web Services set that stage by exploring how Agriculture 4.0 is the synthesis of the tools and systems that have come before with technology that is becoming reality now, from robotics and electrification, to digital twins and the metaverse.
“I see Ag 4.0 as a continuation of maturing, automating, and accelerating of the value of those existing technologies and allowing us to focus on doing more with less, creating more customer value and delivering more overall value to the farmer,” said Teeple. “Every organization needs to be working today on digital transformation to understand what has to change to support where technology is going.”
Keynote Robin Raskin, a veteran journalist and author who founded The Virtual Events Group, took us into the metaverse to find out more about this strange new world that everyone is talking about. “The metaverse has caught the imagination of nearly every industry,” said Raskin. “We have a generation growing up who believe that digital assets really are important, whether it’s a piece of art, or a piece of corn, or a piece of land.”
Following Raskin, the first day of the conference included panels on virtual cropping, quantum computing, and unlocking the potential of imaging.
Dave Gebhardt, General Manager for EarthDaily Agro, moderated the panel which focused on fully utilizing the massive potential of imaging data. “Imagery has been around for a long time, and it’s still not one of the most highly sought after data sets,” said Gebhardt. “So we talked a little bit about how we combine different data sets, maybe some satellite imagery with drones.”
Robotics and autonomy have been making great strides in agriculture over the past decade and the value of the autonomous farming sector forecast is expected to reach $95 billion by 2027.
“Autonomy Makes Strange Bedfellows” was the title of a panel organized by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) and moderated by Senior Vice President Curt Blades with representatives from John Deere, Yara North America, and Topcon. “Those are three very different companies that are all collaborating with each other and others in the industry,” said Blades.
Blades said Yara is a global crop nutrition company that has been actively involved in AEM and the precision ag space. “They’ve had the vision of understanding how important it is to work really closely with traditional equipment manufacturers.”
Representing Yara on the panel was Incubation Lead Courtney Yuskis. She was joined by Michele Kaiser, Business Development Manager, ISG, John Deere, and Kent Carroll, VP Sales for North America with Topcon Agriculture.
Starting day two, keynote speaker, Rob Dongoski, Partner, Food and Agribusiness Leader with Ernst & Young, spoke about how technology is enabling dramatic change in the food system for both producers and consumers. “As a society, what we’re leaning in on is friendliness to our planet, so how do we improve some of our practices using technology to make it more planet-friendly?” he asked. “The opportunity to leverage technology in the food system is phenomenal right now.”
Connecting farmers to consumers in the cloud was the topic of one panel moderated by Aaron Hutchinson, Co-Founder and President, CropTrak. “We need to do better with partnerships between technical companies to make it easier for the farmers to have more choices and …share data in a very conservative way with food companies, ag retailers and ultimately, with the consumer.”
Conference sponsor Ernie Chappell, EFC Systems, was pleased with the turnout and impressed with this year’s program. “We had a pretty broad base of both participants and content, spanning robotics, autonomy, IoT, sensors, electrification, all the way to quantum computers and the metaverse, things I never ever heard of before,” he said. “It was really thought-provoking and great to see there’s more to learn for all of us.”
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