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Perfect storm provides opportunities to address future ag challenges 

The president of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers says a perfect storm is providing the opportunity to address future food production challenges.  

Megan Tanel tells Brownfield “There’s no doubt that our American farmers have always met the challenges of their time. They’ve always stepped up. They’ve always focused on the impact for them to produce the food that we need to feed everyone. Referencing that perfect storm, you’ve got the global population rising, you’ve got food demand increasing, the type of food demand at times increasing with third world countries looking more at protein. We’ve got that shrinking skilled workforce.”

AEM recently published a whitepaper looking at trends changing agriculture today, impacting farmers, and reshaping how food will be produced over the next decade.

Tanel says now is the time to prepare to meet tomorrow’s challenges.  

“There’s no time like now to be able to use this forward thinking and make sure that we’re prepared with solutions to meet these challenges head on,” she says. “It’s really exciting for us and AEM and our member companies are understanding that it’s a new way of thinking. It’s a new way of doing business. We’ve had to be so flexible in the last two years anyway. You know, let’s continue that flexibility. Let’s focus on the food production challenges of tomorrow and make sure that we’re ready with solutions.”

The 13 trends outlined in The Future of Food Production whitepaper include: produce more with less environmental impact, optimization of water use, increase global demand for protein, shorter food supply chain, geographic shifts in production, advanced food traceability helps maintain consumer trust, farmers adjust in response to emission regulation, efforts to decarbonize create adjacent economies, connectivity gap narrows, artificial intelligence enables insights-driven farming, resources pour into cybersecurity, farm ownership models change, and new business models emerge.

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Audio: Megan Tanel