Connectivity Over Conformity

How The Move From Production Units to Network Nodes Is Transforming Agriculture

The problem in agriculture today is that most farmers are stuck playing a losing game.

They sell their products at lower and lower prices, leaving them with ever-shrinking margins while input costs continue to rise.

At the same time, service providers (many of whom have never spent more than a day on a productive farm) spend all of their time telling those same farmers how important they are, how critical it is for them to stay on the charted path indefinitely.

After all, "we need to feed the world," right?

The reality is that the rules have changed for creating abundance. And most people are missing it. They think it's business as usual.

But look around you; the companies creating the most value today aren't manufacturing plants or centralized bureaucracies with hierarchical, top-down org structures.

They're distributed ecosystems, nodes on a network that rely on mass computation (Moore's Law) and mass connectivity (Metcalfe's Law) to supply the rest of the network with their niche goods or services.

And this transformation is coming to agriculture.

Just think: for nearly two centuries, the Western economy thrived on the principles of mass distribution and mass production.

And that was mostly great! It brought us flushing indoor toilets, the modern corporation, cars, tractors, and many things we take for granted today.

But just like Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

And we are facing quite a few challenges in agriculture today, including soil health, water scarcity, labor shortages, a changing climate, and pest and disease management just to name a few.

The future - the way forward to overcoming these challenges - will be found in harnessing computational power and unprecedented connectivity at the farm level.

What most people miss in the discussion around agtech is that it's not just another tool in the farmer's tool belt or a better way for the incumbents to "digitize agriculture." It's a reshaping of the entire industry.

Farms and farming communities are transitioning from mere production units to vital nodes in an expansive network. It's a chance for each to lean into their strengths, offering the unique value they're primed to produce.

If we actually want to improve farms and rural communities, we must find ways to help farmers differentiate their products and break free from a system that's keeping them on the brink.

Agtech should empower farmers to capture unique value rather than maintain the status quo.

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