Adrian Saenz presented last week during the Potato Business Summit, held in conjunction with Potato Expo 2022. Saenz is currently the Division Business Manager for the John Deere Agricultural & Turf Division within Deere and Company where he is responsible for Channel Sales and ensuring performance of the Ag and Turf business portfolio across 7 Western US states.
During his presentation, titled “Ag Technology Outlook“, Adrian highlighted the importance – and abundance – of data that modern commercial farmers are able to gather via technological means nowadays and in the near future.
“It is important to note that for most of us who don’t look at the bits and bytes and the amount of data that we actually are ingesting and processing day-to-day – the amount of data being generated off the farm is growing at 10x every two years, so if you step back for a second and think about that, you’re generating 10 times the amount of data every two years or every three crop rotations,” Adrian said.
“You are getting a huge huge amount of data collected that needs to be used in a better and more informed way. And so one of the things that I think data will do in the next one to three years is become magnified in the way that we use it to identify problems and ultimately be more prescriptive so that in identifying problems many of you have already been using things like yield maps and satellite imagery and so forth.
“When you combine that and overlay it with things like Field Analyzer and other tools, you help really magnify and isolate those problem areas in the field and look down at the individual field conditions to understand the factors that are driving your variance and productivity and ultimately yield.”
Adrian says it’s just “an amazing thing what data is allowing us to do on the other side of things and the way we get work done as well, so if you look at the way we’re getting work done today versus five to ten years ago, and just talk about work processes and using assets and fleets of machines, the work processes that are being employed today by largely low level or part-time labor are really benefiting from the use of this digital data plan.
He pointed out that there’s a lot of data that’s coming from machines, and with labor costs getting higher, there’s also a tremendous influence right now in the industry of people looking at machine and operator data benchmarks to really improve and optimize operator runtime productivity.
“We feel very very confident that data is going to feed both prescriptive identification and resolution of problems and also very very confident it’s going to drive improved work processes to drive better results and outcomes.”
The other thing that’s showing a lot of promise right now in terms of using data is the convergence of tools that help farmers forecast profitability, Adrian said. “With all these new data inputs and the power of AI, the power of more predictive analysis that you can use – think of farm data as your biggest ally in managing the risks and driving outcomes.
“Data it’s just stopping there, and at John Deere we feel an immense commitment to really focus on building smarter and more effective machine forms. We have a number of internal teams focusing on the next generation of smart equipment – without question having sensors, data technologies and input from farmers.
“Actual location data is making our machines smarter, it’s making them more agile, and it’s making them more seamlessly able to integrate the use of sensors and important data that you have that’s unique about your operation – to provide feedback to the operator, to your data analysis platform, and to your trusted partners who give you advice to optimize your operation.”
Adrian noted that “with smarter machine forms comes built-in monitoring systems that can leverage things in the future, like predictive AI data management systems that can use predictive AI, and things that will drive a lot better decision making and just optimize every part of a farm’s management from end to end.”
Source: Potato Business Summit. Full agenda here
Photo: John Deere
Video: The video below can also be watched on YouTube here
