Agtech Does Not Replace 'Boots on the Ground'

Agtech Does Not Replace 'Boots on the Ground'

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for you Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

While more and more technology is being commercialized for agriculture, there is still no substitute for time spent out in the field. Shannon Winny is the owner and senior agronomist for GroWest Ag Ventures.

Winny… “I think you have to be in the field. You have to be looking at what you're actually seeing. I literally go in the field and I look for everything. You know, nutrient deficiencies, insects, weeds, disease, everything. So it's hard to have something that can fully replace that because I think that there are some areas that are going to start to get missed and you lose that human function too where it's like, okay, this is a low area in the field. This is what I'm expecting to see in that area or right. There's, there's some different functions there.”

The difficult aspect about that, however, is being able to find employees who have this expertise.

Winny… “There's nothing that replaces boots in the field right now. And so you need to have someone who is really, really strong agronomically because we're dealing with customers that that's what they expect. Making sure that that's the forefront of the business is that they're going to get really good service and really good, cutting edge ideas and all of that.”

Winny hopes to find these people in order to grow her agronomic consulting business.

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