Online ag retail, precision tools, and venture capital in ag — a RealAg LIVE! with Shane Thomas

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Welcome back to the LIVE! segment, featuring an interactive 30+ minutes of the latest and greatest on any number of topics.

To kick off this week’s line up, host Shaun Haney is joined by Shane Thomas, with Farmer’s Edge, to talk about all things precision ag adoption, venture cap investments, see-and-spray technology and much more.

Tune in every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 3 pm Eastern on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Twitch, for the latest LIVE! segment

  • Luck favours the bold, or something like that.
  • Shane publishes a weekly newsletter, too; he digs in to some fun agronomic topics. (Editor’s note: and has published plenty here on RealAgriculture)
  • Investments of venture capital (VC) money into agriculture is flat, year over year, 2019 to 2020
  • Is that good? Bad? What does it mean?
  • Have we matured as an industry (re: agriculture investment)?
  • You can’t make money off $5 apps. You can’t be uber complicated either. User experience is critical to adoption of new technology.
  • Navigating the digital space — we are starting to see some traction, good uptake, and better understanding.
  • See-and-spray technology: continued interest, for sure.
  • Certain tech adoption can be so fast (GPS/guidance), will this see-and-spray be the same? We’re still working out some of the details
  • Does selective spraying mean we could bring back older herbicides or expand labels because of crop safety?
  • What about livestock? Why don’t we see more tech and precision ag in the livestock sector?
  • In Germany, they put butter IN the pretzels
  • The Luddite factor: what do we see in the next 10 years? Will we see a return to more basic tech?
  • Farmers want to be able to fix their own equipment maybe, but they don’t want to return to horses or steel wheels
  • Irrigation tech: remote access. Smartwatch-type tech. Incredible innovation in a short amount of time.
  • Let’s look at some of the changes in ag retail: traditional, bricks and mortar vs. digital, online retail. Nutrien vs. Farmers Business Network
  • Is the territory manager a thing of the past? Best Buy vs. Future Shop example. Did you need to go to the store? You need knowledgeable staff to draw people in — staff who are helpful and knowledgable, that add value.
  • Are we solving a problem for our customer? It all comes down to that.
  • What about 3D printing on farm? To make parts! Dealerships are few and far between and don’t stock parts like they used to.
  • It’s not about one company handling all the data for one farm, and a la carte options for data will be popular in the future

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RealAg LIVE! (view all)Season 1 (2020) Episode 67
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