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Farm automation to place premium on IT knowledge

A Purdue University ag economist says increased farm automation will force farm managers to become IT specialists.

“Someone on the farm needs to get more knowledge about IT, information technology, in general,” Michael Langemeier said. “And more knowledge about looking into technologies to adopt or not to adopt, how fast to adopt the technologies.”

Langemeier tells Brownfield farmers will have to predict how emerging technologies will feed off of each other.  He said the coming changes aren’t just coming to production agriculture.

“This is happening to a lot of industries,” he said. “So, we’re going to be competing with other industries like manufacturing and other small businesses for these same people,” Langemeier said. So yes, people that have certain skills are going to have good job opportunities to say the least.”

He said managing people will also have a greater emphasis. Langemeier said automation will develop faster on the crop side of farming because plants are easier to predict than animals.

Michael Langemeier Interview

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