Kelly Robertson Farms

I saw a poster once. One of those De-motivational posters, I think, that said something like the road of technology is like a marathon with no finish line.  Well, I think it is more like a death march:   Some people can endure to the end, others fall out along the way. 

Three things cause me to say this, so let me explain:

Why are there less farmers?  Because of technology.  Pure and simple.  We don’t need a farm or farmer every section when we have technology to make up for boots on the ground:  Tractors replaced horses.  Hybrid seed replaced open polinated.  Herbicides replaced cultivation.  GPS replaced markers.  I could go on, but you get the idea. 

The work that one man can do and the quanity of crops he can produce on the same land that once occupied several farmers, is amazing.  And his production capacity is growing by the year.  Grow with technology or die. 

Adapt to new technology or die!  Not a nice thought, but accurate.  I was at a meeting the other night and a man at the meeting said that he didn’t want or need to be a farmer after he saw the 37 acres farmed across the road from his house last week.  I thought he was talking about maybe organic, or not liking chemicals, or something but he wasn’t.  “You know, there were 5 different big four wheel drive tractors in that field before they planted it.  They killed that ground.  And the cost…how could they make money?  I don’t know what they were thinking.” 

What he was saying is that they might have had big iron, but they were not using the latest technology or techniques to farm the field.  Technology is going to be used by your neighbors so you had better be using it too.  If not, then be ready to be passed up and passed over.  All of us have access to the same technology.  GMO traits, GPS, consulting, tillage techniques, soil management techniques, etc.. 

Same in the consulting world.  GPS should be standard with your practices.  Email, text messages, electronic downloads and file transfer.  Just because you think using it makes you look like your competition instead of unique is stupid.  Yes, your unique.  Your uniquely useless.

Keeping up takes time!  Time is money.  Time is valuable.  Time is something we can’t make.  And time will pass you by if your not making time to keep up with changes in technology.  The most successful people in the world, not necessarily the richest, but most successful, spend an average of two hours a day reading materials not directly related to their occupation.  They are keeping up with the rest of the world and are able to anticipate changes in their field before they happen, because they have their fingers on the pulse of new technology.  Work smarter, not harder.

I try to spend two hours a day reading, surfing, blogging and listening to things not related to Ag.  The results have been enlightening.  I have tried to get my friends and colleagues to do the same, but they often spout the same old refusal recital:  I don’t have time, I am too busy.  MAKE TIME.  Make time to get away from what you do so that you can see the forest for the trees. You can see the big picture andyou are not judging the world from your back door or front window. 

I have had cause to think about technology the last few days. How I am not using it, how I am using it and how I should be using it.  My crooked rows on my first field of corn show me that I should have been thinking all along about my auto-steer in the sprayer being in the planting tractor as well.  My accounting software shows me where the money goes and for what.  It keeps track of profit and loss.  It tells me if I am a healthy operation or not.  And my management practices show me that if I implement the latest technology that I am not seen as an outdated farmer or someone who is not “with the times” but rather as a forward thinker who is ahead of the herd. 

Technology is a death march:  how are you enduring?