Start with challenges that aren’t changing, not the latest innovation, advises Rhishi Pethe, head of product at Mineral at X. X is Alphabet’s moonshot factory, “with the mission of inventing and launching breakthrough technologies to help tackle some of the world’s hardest problems, including agriculture.”
His insight was published in Agweb:
“Most agronomic decisions in farming are local and contextual at the farm level. Additional sensors, data, and models will continue to enrich the contextual understanding on a given farm.”
“The availability of better remote sensing data combined with on the ground sensors, including on equipment, will power better machine learning and artificial intelligence models. It will provide a richer context to agronomists, advisors, and farmers to make better decisions.”
“There is always something more than the farmer, or an agronomist who has worked with the farmer knows, which a model or data cannot capture. Technology and tools will complement the farmer and/or agronomist’s context and intuition, with rigor and scientific method to create the most value.”
“Our desire for simple, intuitive experiences and quick time to value will NOT change.”
“One of the main barriers to adoption of AgTech is poor user experience and time to value.”
“Future solutions will have to significantly reduce the barriers to engaging. Technology and solutions will have to provide new modes of interaction and engagement, including voice, text, and other mechanisms, to reduce the effort onboard, and time to find value.”