Tradeoffs in Agricultural Engineering

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

When it comes to agricultural technology, just because we can create new products and features doesn’t mean we should. So how does a company like Case IH determine what new technologies will actually be used and provide value to farmer customers? That’s part of the challenge says customer insights lead, Dan Klein.

Klein… “When we're pushing the envelope and some of the technology and the new things are out there, we always gotta tie it back to what problem are we solving? How much value is it gonna create for our customers? And if we can create that much value, what are we gonna do to make sure that it's consistently utilized in the marketplace? And when they get out there, you know, when we look at profitability from customers, you know, as an example. Some of them look at productivity, some of 'em look at pure cost, meaning labor, fuel, uh, things like that. And what we're looking for is ultimately we want to reduce the cost, but we also want to increase the value. And those are basically not mutually exclusive each other. I can reduce fuel consumption, but if it doesn't gimme more done in the day, the value of getting more done in the day is, is more profitable for our customers than, than maybe controlling the cost. So we need to do both.”

Klein says the engineer quantifies those impacts so they know what tradeoffs they are making when bringing new technology to the market.