View from the Cab: The future of ag

(Kent and his son, Kasen, at last week's Precision Planting Winter Conference)

By Kent Casson

As my son came along to attend an ag event with me last week, it made me wonder what the future generation of farmers will look like.

I attended so many meetings with my own dad over the years and now Kasen tagged along with me to the recent Precision Planting Winter Conference. Seeing Kasen and a few other kids there combined with all of the technology in the room made me think of the future.

How are we going to feed a growing world population with such ambitious goals by the year 2050? The answer was right there in the room. It will take all of this technology to get us there along with the next farming generation.

We will likely see increased dependence on GPS guidance systems and controls to produce more yields with fewer acres. For instance, new sprayer technology can visibly see weeds out in the field and can target spray certain areas without wasting chemicals on the rest of the field. Shutoff controls on planters can prevent us from wasting extra seed and accurate autosteer boundaries allow us to save fuel without overlapping. That is a win-win for everyone.

Even though technology will likely keep increasing, don’t expect our children to run their operations from the office computer just yet. I think it will take some forward-thinking farmers well into the future to work on each ag operation to ensure we continue producing a safe food supply for the entire world.

Don’t get me wrong, though – agriculture could look entirely different in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. I expect to see more drone technology utilized to eliminate extra trips across a field. We are already witnessing increased use of Unmanned Aerial Aircrafts for this and other purposes. Companies are now promoting spot spray capabilities from the air and this is only the beginning.

Widespread use of completely autonomous tractors and machinery may be several years away or may come sooner than we think. This could help with a worsening labor shortage and even safety on the farm. We all saw those videos a few years ago of tractors driving up and down fields by themselves and it is just a matter of time until we see these in neighboring fields and, eventually, our own.

I am excited for what the future holds in this industry. One thing is certain: people will always need to eat and they depend on us for it.