Not just a great line from a Tolkien movie or a Henny Penny the sky is falling reaction, but to be clear, the world is changing.
As much as the plow, the internal combustion engine, the all weather cab and the internet have all left their mark on farming, Artificial Intelligence (or AI , not to be confused with the steak sauce A1) is already making an impact and it isn’t going away.
AI helps marketing become less emotional and more based on empirical data. It can allow for complex computations of chemical, environmental, and production data to generate farm decisions without the “gut feel”. You will know when it is in complete control when AI can predict when hay is ready to put up, I think that is probably the last bastion of the farmer’s intuition and feel dominance.
Newer produced tractors and other pieces of equipment are reporting on their use to their manufacturers, whether the purchaser knows it or not. If a warning light is triggered, it is more likely than not that the someone in the manufacturer’s team (dealer, repair depot, sales, etc) gets wind of it at the same time the farm operator does.
What does that matter? If the operator choses the duck and ignore method of repair, that piece of equipment may soon be out of warranty terms and conditions. Not possible you say? When was the last time you read a warranty of any kind or attempted to enforce them? Failure to follow manufacturing guidelines is a sure-fire way to not get that lemon engine replace. It can be a simple as failing to service the engine. Gone are the days of show me where you bought your filters at to prove you serviced the engine. In are the days of, let me check your sensor reports, nope, I don’t see that your engine oil ever reached zero, so it is highly unlikely you actually changed the oil.
All that data would be a Herculean task to manage but for the advent of Artificial intelligence. This AI will process these reports, but it is a hungry beast. Not only does it want to be fed data, but it needs power in the form of electricity to do its work. That electricity has to be generated somewhere with some sort of energy conversion, which is frequently going to a fuel source, fossil or renewable.
This increase in energy demand make drive new and changing markets for the ag sector. Those who don’t change and adapt will be cut out of opportunity. While the warning light on the dashboard may be for an oil change, it might be a warning for a change to be made by the operator instead.
