Digitizing The Farm Isn't Easy
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Many companies promise to help digitize farm management. But there are a few barriers to making this happen, assuming it’s even important for a farmer to do so. One of the biggest challenges is the upfront effort to transfer physical knowledge into the digital world. Gripp CEO Tracey Wiedmeyer says they’ve thought this through to help farmers track equipment.
Wiedmeyer… “I mentioned 95 - 98% of the time we're seeing kind of consumer apps and analog. The other 2% of the time it's some sort of app not built for ag, which is typically a computerized maintenance system or a fleet tracking app. And their approach has been, 'Hey, Mr. Farmer, gimme a list of everything you own'. Which immediately draws anxiety from the farmer because they don't know. These farms have been consolidated. Sometimes it's 40 miles away. Like they gravitate towards the stuff on tires, but the flexibility Gripp allows them to track anything. Then the second question is, 'okay, give all the history'. And again, they don't have that. It's in their head. It's a paper book. It's in a spreadsheet. And so what we've done is the opposite of said, look, we're gonna put a QR code on your asset. It can be a sticker, a big, a small, a magnet, a PVC card, a pop riveted data like that' s irrelevant, other than being a bridge into that profile that you build over time. So attach a QR code, take a picture, give it a name, and it's immediately available.”
Wiedmeyer says they’ve done 100-200 assets in this way in just a half a day.
