Author: Jim Sulecki

Finding Our Collective Future in Phoenix

Posted on by Jim Sulecki

James C. SuleckiBy James C. Sulecki, Corporate Content Director, Meister Media Worldwide

When we began conceptualizing the first PrecisionAg Vision Conference many months ago, we had in mind a unique assembly of representatives from all walks of agriculture and its many product and service affiliates. At the same time we began crafting our programming for attendees who had one unifying characteristic: They would be drawn from the more senior levels of their organizations, bringing both the responsibility and the passion to assert a strategic, multi-year agenda for technology-driven agriculture.

After taking a quick look at the wide range of attendees we look forward to hosting in Phoenix, I’m happy to say that even with five weeks remaining before the opening of the Conference, our effort is shaping up to be “mission accomplished.” Let’s take a quick glance at who has registered to date.

  • A number of very large growing operations.
  • Assorted senior-level personnel and precision ag managers from highly respected ag-retail and cooperative organizations including Crop Production Services and GROWMARK.
  • Precision technology and equipment suppliers including AGCO, John Deere, and Raven.
  • Crop input (and increasingly data-science) companies such as Bayer and Wilbur-Ellis.
  • Officials from trade organizations and their respective member companies united in the Coalition to Advance Precision Agriculture.
  • Diversified food organizations including Campbell’s and Smithfield.
  • Highly interested parties from the ag-tech and financial and investment communities including Rabobank, the Mixing Bowl, and William Blair, along with “outside voices” from the healthcare and oil and gas sectors.
  • And last but not least — delegates from countries outside of North America including Australia, Germany, Nicaragua, Ukraine, South Africa, Jamaica, Brazil, and Argentina.

Add it all together and we expect an unprecedented dialogue about the singular opportunity that precision agriculture and the digitization of the farm holds — for all our organizations. We look forward to seeing you in Phoenix …

“Top 10” Precision Leader Wade Barnes to Highlight Panel Discussion on Global Ag

Posted on by Jim Sulecki

content_wadebarnes1Wade Barnes, CEO of Farmers Edge and recently named one of the “Top 10 People in Precision Agriculture” by PrecisionAg Media, will key an expert-panel discussion on “The Global View of the Digitization of Agriculture” at the premiere PrecisionAg Vision Conference.

Once an agronomist in his native Manitoba Province, Canada, Barnes has built Farmers Edge into an organization with nearly 300 employees specializing in everything from data science to hardware engineering, to soil science and sustainability.

Barnes will be joined on the international panel by Dan Hodgson, President, FarmQA; Jim Chambers, CEO, Observant; Robb Dunn, Cropping Systems Specialist, FarmWise; and Guillermo Salvatierra, CEO and CTO, Frontec SA.

Read PrecisionAg Media’s full list of the “Top 10 People in Precision Agriculture” here.

 

CAPA Endorses, Supports Vision Conference

Posted on by Jim Sulecki

CAPA-LogoLargeThe Coalition to Advance Precision Agriculture (CAPA), comprised of trade associations and organizations representing a diverse range of sectors within the agriculture industry, has announced its official support and endorsement of the PrecisionAg Vision Conference. CAPA organizations include:

  • AgGateway
  • Agricultural Retailers Association
  • American Farm Bureau Federation
  • American Farmland Trust
  • American Seed Trade Association
  • American Soybean Association
  • Association of Equipment Manufacturers
  • Council for Agricultural Science and Technology
  • CropLife America
  • Field to Market – The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture
  • Irrigation Association
  • National Agricultural Aviation Association
  • National Association of Wheat Growers
  • National Corn Growers Association
  • National Cotton Council of America
  • Solutions from the Land
  • The Fertilizer Institute

 

Precision Agriculture’s Economic Impact Far Exceeds Its Financial Impact, Budzynski Says

Posted on by Jim Sulecki

Dr. Jim BudzynskiIt’s a currently unanswerable question: How large, exactly, is the precision agriculture market?

As Dr. Jim Budzynski, agribusiness strategist and conference committee co-chair of the 2016 PrecisionAg Vision Conference, notes on PrecisionAg.com, the direct financial impact of precision farming could range from $500 million to $3 billion.

But this obscures the larger picture. “There is not one single element of inputs or equipment which will not be impacted by the development of precision agriculture,” Budzynski writes. “In a $60 billion total market for inputs and equipment, it’s not an exaggeration to project that literally tens of billions of dollars of sales could be directly impacted by precision ag and its development.”

More the reason to attend the PrecisionAg Vision Conference, October 18-20, in Phoenix, AZ, he says. Among the questions that will be addressed are: How is precision agriculture likely to change the industry? Who will “drive this truck,” and who will be run over? What can we learn from other industries? Which technologies will be transformative? And, when is all this likely to happen?

Read the full story on PrecisionAg.com.

Six Reasons Senior Executives Must Attend The First-Ever PrecisionAg Vision Conference

Posted on by Jim Sulecki

By Jim Sulecki, Corporate Content Director, Meister Media Worldwide

Following is an excerpt from Jim Sulecki’s recent blog on the PrecisionAg® Vision ConferenceSM. Read the full story.

#PrecisionAgVision

Until now the various components of precision agriculture were a little like continents separated by hard­-to­-navigate oceans. But with the digitization of agriculture allowing these continents to talk with one another, something of a “Pangea” of data­-driven agriculture is rearing into view.

If you’re a senior executive charged with helping to chart the next two or three years of an agriculture, supplier, food, allied, or policy organization, here are six very important reasons why you’ll want to join us at Meister Media Worldwide as we host the premiere PrecisionAg Vision Conference, October 18­-20 in Phoenix, AZ.

  1. If you know where the industry is going, you’ll know where YOUR organization is going. No one can be caught flat­footed these days and survive; the world just moves too fast, and too often you can never catch up. Join us in Arizona to get a holistic sense of what’s afoot and what’s coming. Consider where you and your organization are likely to fit (or not). React accordingly.
  2. Line up allies and potential partners that you’re not likely to run into in other venues – senior executives like you whose job is to stay one step ahead of the game, amass the best thinking among your peers (and competitors) and contemporaries in other industries, and have that phone call or email answered when it’s time to reach out. They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, but so do tumultuous times. A partner or ally tomorrow may be someone you haven’t talked to – or even thought of – today.
  3. Reach passably­-expert status on complex technologies in just a handful of days. Sure, you have in­-house technicians on data and precision technologies who stay under the hood and make the high-­tech engines run. But do you really fundamentally understand the overarching utility and value of these technologies and how they best can be harnessed to move your – and your customers’ – business agenda forward? You’ll leave Phoenix with a far greater understanding of how the technological pieces work and fit together.
  4. Get above the “white noise.” We’re crafting a conference agenda that maps the current world of precision technology, but we’ll also free you up for meals, networking receptions, and Vision Roundtables where you can go as deep as you like or take the conversation to the highest altitude possible. Our days together will be about action, not hype.
  5. Rev the engine for 2017. We’ve intentionally scheduled the Conference for mid­October, just as the 2016 production season is winding down and the grade to 2017 begins to rise. Enriched by new perspectives and fortified by confidence in the future (and also, incidentally, warmed by the autumn sun of the Sonoran Desert), you’ll return home ready and raring for the future to start now.
  6. Participate in shaping the future of precision and the digitization of agriculture. Sound preposterous? It’s not. From what we anticipate will be an unprecedented precision­focused massing of many of the best minds from the realms of agriculture, food, academia, policymaking, tech, and financial will emerge a robust dialogue that will help to accelerate the promise of technology­-driven agriculture.

It’s an event that could be looked back on as a watershed event in the digitization of agriculture. We look forward to seeing you in Arizona in October.

Read the full story at PrecisionAg.com.