“We talked about technology a little bit, especially with the swine, but one question I had is, in what ways does technology improve agricultural efficiency?”
Rose Leary is the secretary of the United FFA Chapter. While attending the FS Fall Ag Roundtables, FFA leaders were given the opportunity to ask a panel of agriculture industry leaders questions.
“I started in 1977 with a planter that had a runner, which was basically a slab of steel that you dragged through the ground and dropped seed behind it,” shares Roseville farmer Ron Moore.
He adds that innovation, both in technology and plant sciences, has helped the farmers evolve over the years.
“The innovations in technology coincided with the innovations in herbicide-tolerant crops to allow us to do no till, and that has reduced our trips over the field, reduced the amount of fuel we use, increased our yields,” says Moore. “So technology has, over my career, made great strides in making us more efficient and more sustainable.”
Technology has enabled data management to improve over the years, according to Knox County farmer Grant Strom. With the adoption of artificial intelligence, information can be used more efficiently.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of innovation now and in the future as we use artificial intelligence and data management systems,” says Strom. “Our ability to analyze the data we’re collecting is going to be much more efficient and on a much greater scale, where we can take the answers from those questions and that data, what it’s telling us, and apply those in the field.”
Not only has technology helped farmers become more sustainable, but it has also allowed farming to adapt to the labor shortages.
