Our inaugural PrecisionAg Vision Conference, held last week in Phoenix, AZ, is officially in the books.
Having convened just over 200 stakeholders that hail from every aspect of the food production value chain over three days to discuss and debate the “promise of data-driven agriculture”, the event clearly delivered on its pledge to provide “a global-view of precision agriculture” to attendees.
Hell, we may have ventured beyond global into the stratosphere during the Networking Roundtable discussions (and the cocktail receptions) alone, but that’s a story for another day.
Anyways, as we caffeine-addled and road-weary journalists often do after these types of events, there were a few random thoughts and themes that stick out from the high-level sessions, at least in this author’s mind.
So now, here are seven noteworthy (or perhaps not-so-noteworthy, depending on your own evaluation of the week’s discussions) thoughts from throughout the week:
- Uncover the next Uber: Syngenta Global Head, Product Development – Oilseeds, Dr. Joseph Byrum made the comment that precision ag needs to find the “next Uber,” and the idea of an Uber for Ag definitely stuck with our audience throughout the week. Just as Uber revolutionized how some of us get from point A to point B with a simple mobile interface that leverages widely adopted and now inexpensive technologies (smartphones, GPS) in a new way to create new efficiencies, there is hope that a simple, yet life-changing new technology platform will emerge to lead the precision agriculture world over and above the current sub-20% adoption rate that many estimate the industry is currently stuck at in the U.S.