Farmers are adopting artificial intelligence tools for a variety of operations around their farm, and the more they use it, the better it gets. That seems to be the consensus among many growers who have jumped on the AI bandwagon, as well as industry leaders like Shannon Kellner, vice president of livestock for Merck Animal Health.
“The beauty of a lot of these tools, as well as sometimes the more difficult thing if you’re in the business of selling them, is the more the tool gets used, the more data you have, the more data you have, the smarter the tool gets, the more insights you get, and as you start to apply the artificial intelligence concept over that, you start to see value propositions.”
Kellner says the early adopters of these tools gain a competitive advantage.
“Now with the way AI is developing, really, and metadata analysis processes and things like that, the customers that are adopting these tools early are going to be well ahead of the curve because they’re going to have that much more information, and the value equation for them is going to be a lot more robust than it’s going to be for somebody who’s a year behind.”
For livestock farmers, the information becomes very specific to that customer .
“Because each management, how they manage their labor is different, how they their feeding programs are different. Just all the things that they do different, the tool is customizing itself to optimize that, as well as they will learn new ways to do things as well. So it’s an extremely fascinating area, and the value that’s going to be unlocked, we don’t even know yet.”