Apple has revolutionized consumer technology by focusing on user-friendly interfaces, data security, access, sustainability, and recycling. The company’s focus extends beyond packaging to include intuitive icons and menus for new adopters, aiming to democratize technology for all. Apple has also prioritized data security, access, sustainability, and recycling, addressing user concerns as they evolve.
Farmers are increasingly exposed to new app-based technology, offering numerous benefits. However, these technologies face challenges such as harsh environments, rodents attacking wiring, unpredictable animals damaging the technology attached to it, and electrical issues. The traditional Silicon Valley approach of “fake it till you make it” is not an option, leading to both AgTech business failure and farmer fatigue with overpromised solutions.
Farmers often struggle with the user interfaces produced by AgTech companies, which are well beyond the capabilities of small and young AgTech firms. This results in farmers investing in new technology but rarely realizing its potential. For example, 25% of cows wear some form of device or sensor, but only mention “heat detection.” Smart tractors have been around for two decades, but data scientists report that the main function used is tracking when the tractor is running and when it is off. Providers of sensors, smart cameras, robotics, and IoT devices installed in livestock farms struggle to provide devices resistant to cleaning and environmental contaminants.
Broadband for control and monitoring is not always available in rural areas. The risk of a data breach is a real problem in most of the technology world, but farm data is less valued and less protected due to the vulnerability to hacking on farms. Agricultural tech platforms often provide huge quantities of data, but meaningful insights are often obscured by too much, too detailed, or untimely data. Farmers often have to work to generate actionable data, such as alerting cows about feed shortages, delayed rumination, lameness, acidosis, and individual changes in nutrition or culling practices.
Despite the perception that farmers are reluctant to adopt technology, since the advent of the plow, they have always innovated. Producers today are increasingly familiar with automation and eager to be the first to install the next big thing, but they don’t love technology for technology’s sake. Farmers want technology that addresses real problems and is user-friendly. As producer Chad Swindoll commented, “Agriculture doesn’t have an innovation problem. It has an implementation problem.”
The current hope for AI is that it can pull out meaningful data, improve the user experience, and anticipate user needs. Apple has expanded consumers’ expectations of simplicity in using technology, which has affected the expectations of farmers. An important aspect of Apple’s revolutionary impact is its emphasis on design and user experience, as well as its commitment to being at the forefront of industry standards.
