‘Farmers That Don’t Learn About New Agriculture Technologies Will Get Left Behind’ – Kip Tom of Tom Farms

Along with his forward-thinking view of technology in farming, Tom in addition takes a very business-oriented approach. “Agriculture production is manufacturing and, once you understand that, you need to understand how to measure, monitor, and control the assets—or crops—that you are growing,” states Tom. “The only difference between us and regular manufacturers is that we don’t have roof over our head. Kip Tom How have you seen technology’s role in agriculture change throughout the years? Now, with new technology, my son can sit in the office and the equipment can go through the field while he sets up 800 trials.

This is what has revolutionized the industry—the ability to fail in small ways more frequently and to understand where we can win and where we should spend our money. That was probably the beginning of technology for Midwest agriculture. Early on, we saw investment in variable rate technologies; we kicked off using barcodes in fields for operators to scan that identify the specific field, the harvest that was planted, and its characteristics.

We actually built some of these things on our own since it was simple to do. The field may have 100 hectares, but we would do it one at a time and the analysis that we received from the sample informed us whether we needed a different amount of fertilizer in that area. He can apply algorithms to it and we can find out what we will need to do the following year for fertility, seed selection, and seed populations.

I was not able to find one and then one day Sid Gorham, the co-founder and CEO of Granular, shows up and states they are going to develop one. If a technology is going to be successful, it cannot stop in the field. I can see that they are trying to code and identify and connect with our equipment to verify whether we are doing what we actually say we are doing [with regards to water].

We need to be looking around the corner since it will be part of our future where the the authorities will try to collect machine data and see what we are doing. It doesn’t mean it will happen, I just know they are looking at it and we should get involved in that discussion.

The other hurdle I see involves the work force on estates and the ability to use some of these technologies. There is a lot of diversity out there from operations that bring in temporary or part-time workforce. They are different people each year that may not have the education that allows them to use some of these tools.

In addition, companies are producing products that allows more of the work to be controlled externally from a central office, but we are investing ourselves heavily in staff to make sure that they actually know how to operate the equipment using these new technologies. We want to make sure they as well understand the benefit of it and most guys are pretty excited to learn and use them.

The reality is that a lot of people are good operators, but when it comes to using technology they need to invest in themselves and their people and understand how to use them.