In the year 2038, 85% of farmers will be using automated tractors.

What I learned in my conversation with Cole Powers, Co-Founder of Intelliculture.

In 2004, John Deere came out with integrated autosteer on the 4720 sprayer chassis.

Turn the corner, hit a button, and the sprayer steered itself magically down the field.

Farmer's response at the time was "what will I do in the cab if I am not steering?"

Within a year or two of using this technology, the response became, "how can I operate this machine without it?"

Fast forward to 2022 and John Deere introduces their first autonomous tractor.

These days, you don't have to be a John Deere salesman to gauge the cheque writer's response ... you can just go on Twitter.

Most aptly summed up by perhaps one of the most eloquent farmer poets out there, John Kowalchuk:

This was the current backdrop against which I sat down to talk with Cole Powers about making technology work in agriculture for the "#regularfarmer" as John coins himself.

Cole had the benefit of working in Silicon Valley amongst the automation of such giants as GM and Tesla.

Seeing the gap in affordability and scalability of digital tools and automation in ag, and wanting to make a difference in an industry they perceived as a worthy purpose, Cole and a group of friends made the leap to form Intelliculture, to help bridge that gap.

"The co-founders came from the automotive sector from a professional setting. We met when we were in college and had the opportunity to work together for a number of years in a varying number of companies.

We worked at companies like GM and Tesla together on internships, and we also worked on the design team at our college called the university of Waterloo alternative. And that was the startup sandbox for us that really led to us starting Intelliculture. We had full creative control to take a Chevy Camaro and rip it apart and make it a hybrid electric vehicle ... designed the entire powertrain and car from scratch. What that project did though, was it really opened up our eyes to what was possible when you had a full control of your own business of your own project. That was the spring point. We loved working on that car, but we loved agriculture even more. We felt that it was the most impactful industry. You hear it a lot, but at the end of the day, growers and producers, they feed the world. That was the most impactful and motivating industry for us. That's really what spurred us to shift out of automotive. We got that startup sandbox experience and the design team that I had mentioned too."

Cole expanded on some of the differences he sees on barriers of entry between automotive and agricultural automation ...

"In the automotive target market, a lot of folks see driving and commuting as more of a chore. It's not something that they necessarily want to do unless you're going on a road trip or something. But if you can sit in the back of your car that chalets you out to your office and back, or out to the farm and back, and you can spend some time chatting with family that seems like a net gain. But in ag I think everyone, myself included, loves carting around in the tractor and actually doing work in the iron. One of the huge challenges in ag is that there's more like environmental variables that you need to be concerned with. There's a lot more going on and changing in a field than there might be on a highway in California, for example. So that poses a whole new set of challenges when it comes to developing and enrolling it, that automation in the industry."

So when does Cole figure we will reach a comparable level of saturation (85%) for tractor automation as we see today with technology like auto steer on farms of consequence?

"I'm going to put it out there as 2038. And that's going to take a long time to develop it, to reach that saturation.

?I don't think that the technology will necessarily be the limiter. I think that it'll just be the market and the organizational structure of the industry too. You've got a ton of family run operation still. And who knows what the cost point of those autonomous tractor that would come in at,?maybe there's a shift towards robots as a service, for example."

Cole and the team at Intelliculture are a startup to watch, helping farmers with everything digital in shop/crop/cab circumstances.

Check them out at intelliculture.ca if you are interested in learning how they might be able to help your operation.

You can hear my full conversation with Cole at growingthefuturepodcast.ca, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.