An Opportunity for Positive Positioning in Automation & AI
Last week, Shane Thomas shared this article in his amazing weekly Upstream Ag Insights :
Shane is bullish that #AI will make net-new jobs for the industry. A solid overview of the “Lump of Labor Fallacy” he uses to make his argument is here: Upstream Ag Professional - November 3rd 2024.
So am I. But you can’t blame farmers (or anyone for that matter) for worrying that AI is trying to take their jobs. Tech Co’s literally advertise that way:
“Our AI will drive the tractor for you… Write the article for you... Do the scheduling for you… Harvest all the crops for you!” etc. etc.?
In my opinion, this is a big mistake. It's a dystopic vision that devalues the human spirit. My favorite article of 2024 was by John Kempf , Technology is a regenerative ag tool, not a silver bullet. The lines that captured it best for AgTech come from the section “Replacing people in the landscape”:
“Many technological innovations are developed with the intention of replacing humans. I would argue that the highest and best design intention for technology is not to replace people, but to make them better: to amplify their unique ability to steward the land.”
The simple truth is:
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Realizing this, Lumo has set our #1 strategic pillar for 2025 as "Empower the Community". Building products, training & culture that prioritizes empowering every customer, partner and their community.
Specific to Lumo, our goal should never be to remove people from the field. Our goal is to build tools that help farmers be happier & more productive achieving their goals.
The goal should be to help them close the gap between their intentions in the field and the actual execution they can achieve. To help them execute their plan to the highest degree of precision, improving business outcomes.?
Our goal should be to give them truthful information they can act on. Reliable data that helps them hone their instincts, make better decisions, and improve their judgement season after season.
Great products often lead to MORE jobs to be done. And if you’re focused on this as a tech company, you’ll find even more opportunities to build training for those jobs, workflow management for those jobs, and level up the rural workforce in the process.?
It’s so much more exciting to build something that produces more than something that eliminates. And I don’t think farmers will take too kindly to automation that has this intention anyways… the dock workers certainly did not (Automation Could Make Or Break New US Port Strike Agreement | ZeroHedge). Nor did the screen writers, auto workers, etc. etc.
Nowhere should we seek to remove people from their jobs. Especially not now that there are serious risks to many of people who have historically done those jobs. It's hard enough to find workers in farming... it's about to get a lot harder. Let's support farm workers every way we can.
AgriFoodTech Analyst & Advisor
3 个月For your context, I appreciate your strategic pillar of empowering the community. I believe in building resilient & engaging communities. Having said that, we need to discuss how AI & automation will change farming & help people. Some people might be doing completely different jobs in the future (& some of them will be unrelated to farming). What it means to "farm" might change dramatically in the future. There are many contexts where you want machines to do the work or people to move out of farming. Some examples are farm workers working in extreme heat in specialty crops (will get worse with climate change) or the 50% population of many Asian/African countries involved in farming. Those numbers should come down, and many people should move out of farming. Much of it will be driven by technology. Your example of the port strike is challenging. The lack of automation & resistance to tech is making many of the US ports uncompetitive to other ports out there. (what happened to the US steel industry or what’s happening with specialty crop acres in California). The more intellectually honest discussion to have is how things can change in the future, who might be impacted & how, & how we can work together to manage that transition.
Secondary Teacher at School District 67 (Okanagan Skaha)
3 个月Fantastic read. As an educator, I'm grappling similar challenges. I'm a big proponent of leveraging Ai to enhance the human-centric aspects of what I do by buying me more time and energy to engage with students.
I am a friend maker, connecter and problem solver with connections in the wine industry. As an optimist and never ending learner.
3 个月Well said Devon. "Technology is not to replace people, but to make them better: to amplify their unique ability to steward the land." Stewarding land that is often way to large for many growers to see and change is a big challenge. We have to build tools that will increase the eyes they have and the visuals to know where to take action.