The 'Heavy Lifting' of Digitization in Agriculture
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Agriculture has been called the least digitized industry in the world, which may not be a fair assessment given that the industry has been adopting digital tools. One of the problems, says EverAg’s Scott Sexton, is that the industry is just so fragmented and disjointed.
Sexton… “The producer is very focused on their function. The haulers are very focused on their function. The cooperative focuses on their function. Those in manufacturing they're, you know, they're dealing with that. So it's disjointed and not by design, but there's no single system that's stretching and connecting all of those different pockets of stakeholders.”
To bring all of this together, Sexton says, is no easy task. Technically, it can most certainly be done, but there’s a human element here of training and change management, that makes things much more difficult.
Sexton… “You think of a driver that needs to be able to collect data on a mobile device. Why? Because that gives you real time information around the movement of these materials. It sounds easy on paper, but you know, getting drivers fully trained, fully executing, doing their job in a digital era. That's all really, really difficult work. I mean, I I'd say the real work is the change management and the heavy lifting of adoption, and it's not to be underestimated.”
Digitization must go beyond just developing new tools.
