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Technology and agriculture have been coupled in numerous buzzword articles over the span of the past few years. When taking away the pizazz and glitter from polished up blogs, agriculture and technology remain as two pillars of a merging industry. In order to fully dive into the real path being carved for agriculture and technology, aside from the fluff being produced by savvy social media influencers, the second annual Cultivate Conference took place to explore the latest state of ag tech. Bushel’s presence at the conference included our Co-founder/Chairman, Ryan Raguse, delivering a presentation on changing trends and futurists in agriculture.
With a conference purpose for “leaders to explore tech innovations they’ve created, are currently building, or are searching for in their industry,” this year’s Cultivate Conference featured fifteen unique speakers across different spectrums of the agriculture industry. Messages revolving around hardware advances, labor shortages, changing climate, and software’s role in the industry laid out the foundation of the conference’s topics. Additionally, the crowd favorite “Angry Farmers Panel” raged its way onto the stage for a showing full of brutishly cheeky honesty that could only stem from a farmer. (Naturally, the absurd title of this article did in fact come from the mouth of one such Angry Farmer).
While not as gut busting as the Angry Farmers Panel, the second panel of the day included a new angle for the conference in dissecting an important part of ag tech: infrastructure. A quiet “behind the scenes” part of making things tick, broadband infrastructure in rural America is a critical piece in setting up the technological success for agriculture. There can’t be a lot of development when there isn’t service, right? At Cultivate, representatives from Dakota Carrier Network and Midco addressed current plans for infrastructure growth in North Dakota. From this panel, it was brought to attention the triumphs North Dakota has in being one of the most covered states in the U.S.
Even more, North Dakota has big initiatives in crafting completely autonomous farms. Crazy, right? These futuristic developments are not out of reach when encapsulating the many diverse advancements each presentation brought to the stage. Bushel’s role in contributing to this autonomous future starts with providing real time business information to growers while creating better business relationships with their grain facilities. With the agriculture technology leaders leading the way to craft a more sound industry, the autonomous future just may be not as out of reach as it seems.
Get the whole story on the full conference from Emerging Prairie’s wrap up here.