Is Your Agricultural Business AI-Ready? Talk To The AI Apple Farmer To Find Out
I was an editor at Successful Farming magazine, managing Agriculture.com in the summer of 2013, when a colleague walked up to me and abruptly asked, “Want to go to Los Angeles next week with my college buddy to pick up a Google Glass?”
“Uh…sure!” It was during my layover in Phoenix on the way to LAX when I first met Bruce Rasa. All I knew was he was much like me — a farm boy, just from Missouri (his farm raised mainly apples and row crops, whereas mine was cattle and wheat). Our paths diverged sharply after graduating from our respective alma maters, me into the ag media and Bruce into the tech sector, where he served as a systems engineer and product marketing manager who contributed to a product launch that netted half a billion dollars for IBM in just a few months. Years later, he led Advanced Technology Solutions for the AGCO Corporation before starting his first artificial intelligence (AI) company.
That last stop was preceded by our trip to LA, where I simply observed as Bruce, one of 8,000 Google Glass “Explorers,” picked up what promised to be the next generation of interactive computing devices that would meld the virtual and analog worlds into one augmented view. The use cases, as we found in taking the gadget to farms around the Midwest in the months to follow, were almost innumerable in agriculture. Bruce and I saw the future. And wow, were we excited.
Flash-forward a few months. Through his exclusive viewpoint and thinking, Bruce essentially ripped the hood off Google Glass, learned its “thinking,” and discovered the influence of the AI component of its operation. That set him off into the ag tech startup world, where he’s since worked to apply AI to the next solution in agriculture.
So when we recently put our heads together again at Stratovation Group – more than a decade after the ill-fated Google Glass experiment – we saw a glaring need in the business of agriculture: Shortening the learning curve and making the AI innovation process much less dizzying. Whereas I’ve long been an informed observer of AI as it relates to the industry in which Bruce and I have lived our lives, he’s the man of action. He understands how AI works, how it does what it does, how it creates what it creates and most importantly, how we can best leverage it to do everything from more efficiently operating farm machinery to maximizing crop yield and quality. The technology’s evolved, but the equation remains the same. We still need data to inform smart work.
But it’s not always easy to wrap our heads around what AI can do for us. In fact, each use case creates the challenge of connecting a lot of dots to clarify the picture. Then, it becomes a matter of applying the right suite of a vastly growing set of AI tools to not just painting the picture but showing its details in entirely new ways that generate altogether new thinking and action. And when you’re already operating a large farm or ranch, agribusiness company or industry policymaking body, staying on top of AI can take up more time and energy than you have. Its potential to revolutionize decades-old business practices and ways of managing agricultural operations is now limited only by those constraints.
That’s where Bruce comes in. The Missouri farm kid turned tech developer turned AI-in-agriculture startup ecosystem leader now has a new job title with Stratovation Group: The AI Apple Farmer. He’s helping farmers, ranchers, agribusiness companies, and everyone throughout the agriculture and food value chain break through those constraints through a range of AI education tools. From the most basic guidance to advanced deployment at enterprise levels and beyond, Bruce stands alone at the intersection of agriculture and AI innovation.
You think ChatGPT is cool now? A few minutes with Bruce Rasa will show you just how small the portion of the AI iceberg is visible right now. A conversation with Bruce won’t just leave you confident in AI’s future in agriculture. Whether you raise crops or livestock, or sell agronomic service, crop seed, fertilizer or machinery, you’ll immediately have a ton of new ideas on how to put it to work.
With a range of education options for companies of any size, Bruce delivers what’s lacking in agriculture to date: Actionable AI inspiration and information you can take to your team and immediately generate results the likes you’ve never seen. But don’t take it from me. Here’s more from a recent Deep Dive podcast.
But don’t just take the hosts’ word for it. They’re AI anyway. But Bruce, myself and the entire Stratovation Group team is about as human as possible. If you’d like to talk about how we can work together to make your team as AI-ready as anyone in agriculture, contact jcaldwell@stratovationgroup.com or visit our website for more information!
Stratovation Group is a forward-thinking marketing research, business consulting and strategic planning and communications firm that specializes in helping businesses achieve success through innovative solutions and strategic partnerships. With a focus on driving growth and fostering long-term success, Stratovation Group empowers clients to navigate the complex business landscape with confidence.