Podcast Summary: "With This Tech, You Can Farm Smarter, Not Harder"

Podcast: The Next Innovation
Host: Situation Room Studios (Jennifer Strong)
Date: November 27, 2025

Overview

This episode explores how cutting-edge technologies—ranging from AI-driven herd management apps to wireless silo sensors—are reshaping the oldest industry in the world: agriculture. Host Jennifer Strong investigates how digital tools and automation are enabling farmers and ranchers to work smarter, not just harder, while honoring the legacy and unique challenges of rural life. The episode features voices from ranchers, innovators, and agtech industry leaders, exploring the practical, economic, and cultural tensions at the core of farming’s digital transformation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Modern Agriculture

• Agriculture’s Foundation: It remains economically vital (over $1 trillion in the US, $3.5 trillion globally) and is rapidly digitizing, driven by new challenges and technologies ([00:00]).
• Rancher Perspective: Cody Alexander, a multigenerational Texas cattleman, embodies both the traditions and the modern pressures of ranching ([00:58]).

2. The Shift to “Precision Agriculture”

• Precision Farming Defined: Dr. Alex Thomason explains that precision agriculture targets resources (like fertilizer) at the plant or sub-field level for both economic and environmental efficiency.
  • Quote:

    "Precision agriculture...means that you are trying to operate precisely on a particular plant or a particular small zone within a field to give that plant or that small zone precisely what it needs."
    — Dr. Alex Thomason [02:59]

• Historical Context: GPS introduced in the 1990s allowed for location-specific farm data, laying the groundwork for today’s digital tools ([03:32]).

3. Herd Management Goes Digital

• Adoption of Basic Tech: Cody’s family started integrating tech with hydraulic chutes for safer, ‘smarter not harder’ cattle handling, replacing manual labor with more efficient machines ([04:51]).
• Cloud-Based Apps: Tools like CattleMax and Herdwatch shift herd data tracking from notebooks to real-time, cloud-powered platforms.
  • Quote:

    "Everything that you're currently writing down on your notebook or typing into your computer... Herdwatch is giving you that platform where you can collect all that data, and then it's also giving you a platform where you can start pulling insights out of that data."
    — Megan Bochansky, Herdwatch US lead [05:54]

• Practical Uses: Herdwatch integrates with Bluetooth scales and EID tags, recording animal weights, health treatments, breeding, and calving data on-site via mobile apps ([08:37]).

4. Adoption Challenges—Generational and Cultural Divides

• Tradition vs. Innovation: Many older farmers remain wary or resistant to adopting new tools.
  • Memorable story:
    Megan recounts helping an 83-year-old rancher transition to Herdwatch after peer encouragement:

    "...Now you'll see him carrying his iPad around that he got just for herd watch, but he carries it around now everywhere he goes."
    — Megan Bochansky [10:21]

• Usability and Motivation: Apps must cater to differing regulatory and cultural contexts between regions like Ireland (compliance-driven) and the US (efficiency-driven) ([07:57]).

5. Silo Monitoring—An Unseen Frontier

• Problem Statement: Traditionally, farmers climb tall silos to check grain/feed levels—tedious and dangerous ([12:25]).
• Levelling Up: Donal Skelly’s company, Levellogix, developed a wireless, self-cleaning sensor for silo monitoring, eliminating the need for ladders and manual checks.
  • Quote:

    "There are a million on farm silos. Almost none of them have any type of monitoring... if your monitoring involves running cables... Suddenly the burden of cost of deploying that falls on labor..."
    — Donal Skelly [16:18]

• Design Innovation: The sensor uses aerodynamic cleaning (suction, not just blowing air) to keep optics clear without moving parts ([16:18]).

6. The Economic Reality

• Upfront Costs: High initial investment remains the single greatest barrier, especially on small or family farms.
  • Cody notes:

    "I just, I don't like the idea of some of the technology ... they're costly. You know, $40,000 a year for hay. And that's just hay..."
    — Cody Alexander [19:59]

• Labor Shortages: As the farm workforce ages, smaller operations are disappearing; the cost of entry for new, young farmers is increasingly out of reach ([26:14]).

7. Data, Automation & the Rural-Urban Divide

• Modern Reality: Most large-scale farmers are now “100% all about data”—using GPS, variable rate seeders, and computer-connected harvesters, often now required for insurance ([23:43]).
  • Quote:

    "A lot of those maps are required by crop insurance. ... and all of that is ... GPS globes on the back and is connected to the Internet."
    — PJ Hufstadter, Reuters [23:43]

• Connectivity Gap: Even if farmers can afford the tools, poor rural broadband impedes their usefulness ([25:54]).

8. The Future—Drones, AI, and Autonomy

• Emerging Tech: Drones are rapidly entering service for active crop treatments, not just mapping ([27:59]).
• AI as Backbone:
  • Dr. Thomason underscores:

    "AI is sort of the centerpiece of that. ... if you don't have the smarts in the middle of that, then none of it's really useful." [29:27]

• Systemic Impact: From smarter supply chains to greater worker safety, all these tools point toward an autonomous future, out of necessity due to labor shortages.
  • Final thought:

    "We have to have autonomous machines that fill that gap."
    — Dr. Thomason [31:16]

Notable Quotes & Moments by Timestamp

• "It's really neat to be able to say you don't have any store bought cows...you've raised every cow that you have..."
  Cody Alexander [00:58]

• "The roots go back to precision ag, a promising movement in the 1990s..."
  Jennifer Strong [01:25]

• "If you have a mechanism...to clean the sensor, that involves moving parts, over time, dust will get into those moving parts and you're back to square one."
  Donal Skelly [16:18]

• "Ideally, you should lay eyes on your cows every day...they are your factory, okay? And I work for them. And as long as I take care of the factory, they're going to take care of me."
  Cody Alexander [21:00]

• "Basically, we're going to be able to give the ability to these large operations or partners, ability for them to share data across the entire supply chain..."
  Megan Bochansky [29:46]

• "I do think that we are at a tipping point. In fact, we've already tipped over for increasingly everything needs to be wireless, the things that we see today and that we do today. I think in five years time it'll be inconceivable almost that that's the way that we used to do it."
  Donal Skelly [30:19]

Vital Segments & Timestamps

• [00:00]–[01:25]: Context setting—agriculture’s legacy and need for modernization
• [02:59]–[04:45]: Precision agriculture explained; GPS-era changes
• [05:28]–[10:07]: Digital herd management—family stories and practical adoption
• [12:07]–[19:16]: Wireless silo monitoring—problem, innovation, safety
• [19:59]–[22:34]: Economic and cultural factors—resistance, cost, legacy
• [23:15]–[26:14]: Rural realities—data-driven farms, connectivity, aging workforce
• [27:59]–[31:16]: Drones, AI, and autonomous systems—future-forward, yet rooted in tradition

Conclusion

The episode weaves together voices from farm, field, and lab to paint a nuanced picture: Agriculture is at a crossroads, balancing tradition, technology, and tough economics. Digital tools promise to make farming safer, smarter, and more sustainable, but barriers—both cultural and economic—still loom large. Jennifer Strong and her guests remind us that the true innovation may not simply be in the technology itself, but in its ability to empower the people who keep the world's oldest and most vital industry running.