附近上门

By

Close your eyes and imagine a working farm. Perhaps you see milking stools in a clapboard barn, or a farmer navigating rows of crops on a battered tractor, stepping down here and there to check on their progress.

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

Those are time-honored scenes, but if that鈥檚 your image of a farm, you may not have been to one lately. Today鈥檚 farms are high-powered and high tech. It鈥檚 time to set the record straight and tell more people about it, especially city-dwelling folks.

Taking stock of ag and tech

There鈥檚 always been a perception gap between city and country folks. But just like your town or city has changed, farms have, too. The modern world has reshaped farm life to a degree many city people would find astonishing.

Milking stools and barns have been upgraded to office chairs and state-of-the-art control centers powered by analytics software. The tractor is autonomous. And crop quality is evaluated by GPS-enabled ground sensors, which deliver live data on water use, fertilizer needs and pesticide effectiveness.

Now, I grew up in a small city, then spent most of my teens and young adulthood in the suburbs of a big one. My company is city-based. But I was exposed to farm life as a kid, through my father鈥檚 family. I visited the farm every year and I loved the land, the fresh air and the way of life. That early exposure still informs the work I do today.

It鈥檚 an experience most of my city friends never had. They might have visited a farm once during a school trip years ago, but when I talk to them, it鈥檚 clear they close their eyes and see.

So it鈥檚 no wonder they don鈥檛 truly understand the issues, the science and the technological realities associated with modern food production. They don鈥檛 know how genetically modified organisms work, or why farmers might want to use them. They don鈥檛 see how much farmers do to protect air, soil and water quality. And they don鈥檛 understand the many roles of tech. They think self-driving s represent the future. But those autonomous farm tractors I mentioned? Farmers have been using them for 20 years.

A few paths forward

The truth is that there is some incredible technology out there, helping farmers do more with less. Most farmers would happily explain this, but they鈥檙e too busy working to tweet about crop data tools. That, however, doesn鈥檛 mean the rest of us can鈥檛 educate ourselves a bit.

Too often, agriculture gets pegged as the sector with 鈥渉and-me-down鈥� technologies, like spray additives originally developed for laundry detergents or new chemical discovery technologies from the drug industry. But there鈥檚 a huge desire within the farming and ag community to innovate. In cities and farmlands from coast to coast, there鈥檚 enormous opportunity to improve how we produce food.

To better understand how our food gets produced, we need to hear more stories about the tech advances changing agriculture for the better. At , we are always trying to showcase, which is to use a nanotech delivery system similar to the one used in bringing the COVID-19 vaccines to the world.

Agriculture is brimming with futuristic-sounding 鈥� but very real 鈥� innovations, such as cab-less self-driving tractors, drones with lasers that scan and treat weeds, and irrigation systems that drip-feed crops with the minimum water necessary.

On the business side, we should be encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on agriculture. And encouraging investors to back more ag startups.

There are advantages to working in this space — regulated markets with loyal, sticky customers means a built-in moat for great businesses. It鈥檚 also an industry that has some large, incumbent companies beyond the tech bubble of Silicon Valley that are ready for disruption.

On a personal level, we should be looking for ways to educate our kids. I recently joined the board of an organization called , which gives kids a taste of Tennessee farm life. They don鈥檛 do field trips — they partner with teachers to put the farm in a wider context. The visit is curriculum-based learning; an entire class unit gets developed around agricultural issues. It鈥檚 comprehensive outdoor learning that kids won鈥檛 easily forget. CHLOE is just one organization with one farm in one state, for now, but I鈥檇 really like to see educators supporting more programs like it.

These kinds of contacts might also help farmers and their kids understand the people they鈥檙e farming for. Because the perception gap goes both ways, and I bet a few of their images of city life are outdated, too.

Darren Anderson is a co-founder, CEO and board member at. He is also on the board of CropLife America, the trade association for the pesticide industry in the USA; a member of the advisory committee for, an organization committed to increasing STEM learning through agriculture and natural resources; and a founding member of ElectSTEM, a nonprofit encouraging people with STEM backgrounds to run for political office.

Illustration: