Early Days for Data-Driven Agriculture

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Farmers have been using digital tools for well over a decade now, but many still believe that the digital agricultural revolution is still in its early days. One of those people is Ranveer Chandra, Chief Scientist of Microsoft Azure Global. He led the creation of FarmBeats which is a platform that brings together farm data and powers many ag technology companies. He says we are starting to see the democratization of data-driven agriculture.

Chandra… “If you look back at 2014-2015 only some of the very elite farmers could be thinking about digital agriculture. Now, through some of the partnerships that we've created, working with partners and bringing our own platform to these partners, we believe we are democratizing data driven agriculture to farmers worldwide.”

While this is exciting, Chandra says we are still just barely scratching the surface of what will be ultimately possible for data-driven agriculture.

Chandra… “Even now we don't yet understand very well what's happening in every part of the soil and every part of the farm. What's happening above and below the soil. We have no visibility into that. We will get more visibility into it. So I'm really excited about what's in the future, but at least where we are now compared to 2015, I think we've taken big steps, but a lot more is going to come.”