News

Ag innovation director: look back in order to look forward

A summit focused on agriculture innovation had attendees focused on the ways technology has, and will continue to transform agriculture.

The AgTech Innovation Summit at the University of Illinois Research Park opened with a keynote named “not your grandfather’s tractor”, a reflection on how drastically agriculture has changed.

“There has been more change to ag in the last 100 years than the 10,000 years before that. Those of us that do it every day maybe don’t realize how different it is from just a century ago.”

Mark Moran, Director of the John Deere Technology Innovation Center says it is important for farmers to look back at the technology timeline to understand how it will continue to improve. He tells Brownfield artificial intelligence (AI) is the biggest advancement to look out for.

“If you think about the challenges that farmers have getting good help, getting enough labor, managing big, complex equipment, AI can help solve some of those problems. It can also help solve some problems of efficiently managing your inputs, optimizing your yield, so it is going to be a new tool kit.”

Several university start-ups attended the summit to pitch their new ideas and hear from representatives from companies like Bayer Crop Sciences, Cargill and ADM about how start-ups and corporations can work together to turn those ideas into actions.