What Farmers Can Bring to the Table

In mid-January, I gave eight presentations to more than 1,000 farmers in Iowa and North Carolina. In addition to allowing me to present my views on technology and profitability, these meetings provided numerous opportunities to visit with farmers and rural agribusiness managers. Several insights from those conversations are worth sharing.

A significant increase in the understanding and use of technologies in agriculture, especially relating to precision agriculture and the Internet, has occurred in a relatively short time.

Today's producers are comfortable with terms such as Global Position Satellites (GPS), sensors and monitors, browsing the web, and e-mail.

Use of these technologies by farmers has included some unexpected applications.

One producer said he uses a GPS equipped golf cart, and another mentioned that his daughter had conducted Internet-based videoconferences to keep in touch with her boyfriend over the holidays.

Focusing more on business, one farmer reported yield and soil maps had been very valuable as he negotiated the terms of a cash lease. This explicit information enabled the negotiation to be based upon the actual productivity of that specific tract of land rather than on general reports of what cash rent was for prime land in the area.

Farmers also certainly have become much more aware of biotechnology. They are comfortable discussing the benefits and costs of today's agronomic traits. Further, they expect new traits to come to the market that will provide specific characteristics desired in the marketplace.

Nevertheless, in small group and individual conversations, producers generally do not want to talk about how technology works. Rather the key questions are: "What effect will all these technologies have?" and "What will farming look like 10 or 15 years from now?"

Those questions stayed in my mind as I drove through Iowa. The ground was covered with new-fallen snow, and I drove by many attractive farm sites. Those farmsteads with red barns especially brought back fond memories of my youth growing up on an eastern Iowa farm that had such a barn.

On cold winter afternoons, it was a good place to be because the warmth from the milk cows was a welcome relief from the temperatures outside. Of course, today that barn stands empty, as do most of the attractive red barns I drove by.

It occurred to me that my emotional tie to those empty red barns is linked to the concerns we have regarding the future of farming. Historically, success in farming has been demonstrated through control of tangible, physical assets, not just red barns but equipment, grain bins, livestock and, of course, land.

Today, however, agriculture is evolving and intangible assets appear to be increasing in value. Those intangible assets include data sets of yield and variable rate application maps, contracts, patents on seeds, and relationships with suppliers and customers. These types of assets are novel to Midwestern agriculture and are keyed to a knowledge base that is continually expanding.

One North Carolina soybean producer well summarized, I think, the challenge facing all of us interested in the future of the family farm structure. He asked the question stated at the outset of this column: "If knowledge is going to be the source of new value in agriculture, how can the individual farmer bring more to the table?"

My response to that question: Farmers need to consider the knowledge created as they grow their crops and livestock, as well as the physical output they produce.

Of the knowledge created, what is the optimal amount to capture and analyze for today's profitability? How much is needed to be strategically well-positioned for tomorrow's agriculture? Further, they must decide if they want to be part of systems that will allow them to learn from the knowledge created by many other farmers, and not just from their own operations.

But farmers are not alone in needing to respond to this challenge. Leaders from farm organizations, government, and universities need to reconsider their roles relative to that question.

Deciding how much and what kinds of knowledge should be publicly available remains a critical issue. The simple answer that "everything" should be available is irrelevant, because it is not economically feasible.

Instead, we need to seriously examine the future strategic benefits of publicly available knowledge systems.

As I reflect upon many conversations in Iowa and North Carolina, I continue to be confident about the future strength of the family farm. The family farm has been, and is, a strong institution because it has continually changed in response to the needs of society.

The types of questions being asked today are difficult and do not have simple answers. However, these questions need to be answered if we are to craft the responses needed to shape the evolution of tomorrow's agriculture.

Steve Sonka is director of the National Soybean Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana.