Supporting New Agricultural Technologies

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

For all of the investment that has poured into agricultural technologies, why are more of them not making an impact on the farm? There are a variety of reasons for this, including not solving a real problem and not offering enough of a return on investment. But another factor is the lack of support for customers to actually implement the solution. Independent agronomist Cassie Misch says this has been a recurring problem in the agtech industry.

Misch… “ I think one of the things we've done poorly at as an ag tech industry is telling the grower there's this great new software or service here: do it all on your own. A lot of these tools and softwares can help save the grower time on the output side, but there is a lot of work to be done on the input side. And I've really seen that in order to utilize some of these services and technology well, it really is helpful to have an advisor, or someone to help you through that. To ask you questions, to enter data for you, or just in general, to try to make the grower's life easier. That's my goal. Right? So along with that, with taking those things on myself, it does also create challenges for how much more workload I can handle it. Right? That is always a challenge.”

Misch owns Platinum Ag Services in Indiana, where part of what she does is help her farmer customers leverage these technologies.