InfoAg 2011: A Kumbaya Moment

Every event I’ve ever attended that’s worth its salt has a prevailing overtone – a feeling of optimism or pessimism, of harmony or conflict, anxiety or excitement – that you can feel just by talking to people and walking the show floor. At the 2011 InfoAg Conference, I heard and felt a prevailing confidence of purpose and direction about precision agriculture technology I haven’t sensed at this meeting before.

I will admit that the raw energy that a crowd of more than 700 attendees and record-high vendor participation had something to do with it. But that wasn’t all.

I was talking to someone at the reception on Wednesday night after the conference day was over, and he noted that the majority of new developments at the 2011 show were about data – how to better collect it, move it, exchange it, aggregate it, and put it to work. I had to agree, and we also talked about how there really wasn’t any significant breakthrough in equipment at all on display on the tradeshow floor. In past years, equipment manufacturers were generally the centerpiece, and newer and better equipment could always be anticipated.

So data did take center stage, but what impressed me was the level of cooperation and collaboration that’s occurring among the precision players. Manufacturers are beginning to identify and embrace their core competencies and are turning to partnerships and agreements with others to widen their sphere of offerings and services to customers, and to make their own products more useful and valuable.

Two of the most evident examples were Raven’s Slingshot API program and MyWay RTK. In making the strategic decision not to pursue enterprise software manufacturing, Raven has opened up portions of its code to software manufacturers to make it easier and more powerful for retailers using those software programs to run on the Slingshot platform – not to mention allow software companies to add functionality to their products and significantly improve the flow of data from field to office. Or, as Raven says, it doesn’t replace existing software applications, it makes them better. The count of software companies signed up is closing in on a dozen.

MyWay RTK is working to bring a broadly compatible RTK solution coast to coast, and has been talking with manufacturers to get them on board. AGCO was proudly displaying the sign indicating their decision to work with MyWay.

Finally, while I admit I was skeptical about the industry’s stomach for sitting around a table and hammering out precision agriculture standards, I was pleased to see how many companies displayed statuettes in their booths indicating their membership in the Ag Gateway standards program. And it wasn’t just window dressing – I asked several companies about it, and almost without fail the response came back: “I really think the industry can do this.” They have me believing it too.

These were the most obvious, but I had many other conversations with companies that see collaboration as a way to further their own sales efforts while bringing more workable solutions to the grower. The result should be greater customer satisfaction and ultimately, more adoption of ag technology in the process. Hopefully, two years from now at InfoAg 2013 we’ll be looking back at this show as the year the industry turned a big corner towards cooperation and compatibility to better serve the farmer customer.