According to Eric A. Spiegel, President and CEO of Siemens, fifty percent of the jobs in America today didn’t exist 25 years ago. On top of that, 80 percent of the jobs students will fill in the future don’t exist today.
While those statistics can momentarily take you aback, think about how they relate to agriculture. Trevor Mecham is the Director of Precision Solutions and Telematics for Case IH. Talking about the new technologies that have surfaced in agriculture, Mecham called them “the Facebook of farming.” While they may not have the social media applications, one can certainly draw the correlations between the speed at which the two have advanced.
What Case IH is doing, as a part of that, is making sure that they surround themselves with people that are immersed in the technology. Not only is it appealing and exciting at the ag business level, but it’s also practical at the ground level.
“The biggest thing that you get (from technology),” says Mecham, “is agronomic data.” This allows farmers to make quicker and better choices to increase productivity and decrease downtime. Technology on the machine-side is also highly beneficial. Farmers can get updates and recommendations on the health of their machine while miles away from the nearest dealer. Additionally, an agronomist can send prescriptions for chemical applications that can be downloaded right to the tractor.
This is a lot of information and it leads to the question of who owns this data. According to Mecham, “We have a very simple position at Case IH in that the customer owns that data.” Using the technology that is made available through Case IH, Mecham emphasizes that a farmer can set up any data sharing as he/she sees fit, ensuring that only trusted individuals with the correct permissions can access information.
© Northern Ag Network 2015
Haylie Shipp
