iFarming: Harvesting the Value of North America's Digital Agriculture

The fourth wave of ag innovation, digital agriculture, is being hampered by numerous barriers to customer adoption. The good news is that this 'bungle' can be resolved through the creation of a universal data platform. Beyond that, we believe the industry needs to focus on specific value-added initiatives geared towards specific grower groups in order to foster understanding and, then, adoption.

picture of field hydration

Our recently published report, Bungle in the Ag Tech Jungle, provided our thoughts as to why digital agriculture has thus far failed to deliver the large potential value promised to farmers and to those venture capital investors backing farm data and software start-ups. To be clear: while several companies offer long-term growth potential, the lack of reliable broadband connectivity and/or a fully developed technological ecosystem with an integrated data warehouse and analytics platform remain the largest barriers to full-scale adoption of digital agriculture as a value-enhancer. 

So how does the industry navigate the path forward? A first step may be the creation of a series of individual farmer data cooperatives, organised around a specific crop in a specific farming region that address specific business pain points. RaboResearch has discovered such an organisation in North America, called Grower Information Services Cooperative (GiSC). GiSC, a farmer-owned organisation, is currently building a variety of software interfaces for cotton growers which will allow (on a permission-granted basis) hired agronomists to help farmers enter, secure, and analyse planting, production, and other information. This idea is powerful, both in its industrial logic and simplicity, given its express purpose of helping farmers maximise operating income and return on capital by obtaining analytical insights derived from actual observed field-specific data.

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