The Future of the Potato
The Future of the Potato. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
Bill Whitacre, CEO and President of the J.R. Simplot Company is fascinated with technology. As he began his presentation to the general assembly of the 2010 Potato Expo he held up his iPhone and briefly described a few of the many things you can do with one.
WHITACRE: What’s interesting about this type of technology is the technology was available to the iPhone and the technology was available well before they actually had applications for it. The technology was there before somebody could have imagined that we could use it in so many different ways.
He says it is very exciting being a part of this new technology but Whitacre said there is a place for the potato industry in this new technology realm.
WHITACRE: What does our agriculture look like inside of that type of world? Well it’s going to look different. Things do move quickly. Technology moves particularly quickly when it matters and what we’re finding is there’s technology that matters all around us and we’re experiencing that.
Whitacre says the potato industry has evolved over the last several years becoming more global, more volatile and complex.
WHITACRE: So when it comes to agriculture, when it comes to the potato business we view the world from kind of a pretty basic three premise perspective. Number one if our business has become significantly more complex than just literally 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. This is not your father’s or your grandfather’s potato industry any longer.
One thing is certain according to Whitacre is that you will see a lot more technology in the agriculture industry in the next few years.
WHITACRE: We also have the fundamental premise that the potato is a fantastic food source. It’s a food source that represents who we are a agriculturalists, as farmers, as growers, as processors and it deserves all the attention and all the nurturing it can possibly have because it plays such an important role in feeding people in the future. And also the third fact – the third premise is that technology is going to play a big role in this. Technology is going to be a big part of how we position the potato in the future.
More tomorrow with Simplot’s Bill Whitacre.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
