KANSAS CITY, MO. — Agriculture is tied with hunting as the least digitalized industry in the world, Aidan Connolly, president of AgriTech Capital, pointed out at the Ag Innovation Forum, held Feb. 13 in Kansas City, Mo., and organized by the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City.

While that may be true, producers, processors and agriculture stakeholders gathered at the event to discuss strategies for implementing the latest technology in everyday practices to cultivate a prosperous and sustainable future for agriculture.

James Lowenberg-DeBoer, professor and Elizabeth Creak Chair of Agri-Tech Economics at Harper Adams University, kicked off the conversation with a glimpse of an agri-tech future. Lowenberg-DeBoer predicted that, while we see growing prevalence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) globally, it will likely be most incorporated into the business realm of agriculture rather than the production side. Within production, Lowenberg-DeBoer anticipates a more focused use of AI.

The morning proceeded with a panel discussion on soil health, moderated by Michael Doane, global managing director of food and freshwater systems at The Nature Conservancy.

One topic brought up by panelist Nick Guetterman of Guetterman Brothers Family Farms was the role livestock plays in soil health. Guetterman shared results of a study conducted on his farm, where the adoption of poultry litter appeared to be essential to the revitalization of the soil when combined with cover crops.

“Livestock integration is key,” he said, adding, “If we want to grow soil health in our country, grow animal agriculture.”

Another panelist, Jason Tatge, chief executive officer of PrairieFood, advocated for the benefits of micro-carbon, which is deconstructed cow manure and distillers grains that go through a hydrothermal carbonization reaction.

“What it does is there’s a lot of microbes in your soil that suddenly start to come back to life once you start to feed the soil,” Tatge said. “And it starts this awesome cycle of bringing back nutrient cycling and water holding capacity.”

Following the panel, Connolly gave his presentation on a brief history of agriculture and the digital disruption.

After noting the minimal use of digitalization in agriculture, Connolly called for greater precision when tracking data with technology.

“We typically don’t know the weight of our livestock on an individual basis in real time,” he said. “If I think about hogs, if I think about chickens, if I think about beef cows, we don’t know how much each animal is eating on a daily basis. We don’t know their level of comfort or stress. We don’t know their health. We don’t know their livability … All these are numbers that if we understood and knew, we could manage those animals better.”

Connolly walked through technologies that he believes are transforming agriculture, including robot sensors, 3D augmented reality, virtual reality, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

In the afternoon, the forum continued with a panel discussion on AI and a presentation from Ranveer Chandra, managing director of research for industry and CTO of agri-food at Microsoft, on generative AI for regenerative agriculture. Chandra spoke on a need for improvement of technology integration across the food supply chain.

“We believe that if you can make the entire food supply chain — all the way from input companies to farmers to logistics providers, warehouses, distributors, retailers, even the consumer — if every entity could be made more data-driven, if they could start using data and AI, it could lead to significant efficiencies throughout the food supply chain,” he said.

The day ended with a discussion on livestock technology adoption, where panelists covered ways for filling data gaps and utilizing tools and technology within the cattle industry.

Panelist Paul Koffman, executive director of livestock technology solutions at Merck Animal Health, detailed the four questions his company asks when looking to build or buy technology: What is the unmet customer need? Does the solution actually address the problem? How are we going to be able to scale and implement it? Who’s going to pay whom?

Another panelist, Cody Buck, director of strategic accounts at AgriWebb, explained how his company’s web-based portal and mobile app look to simplify management and tracking for ranchers.

“We’re helping facilitate the data capture and the reorganization of agriculture and livestock agriculture to a more organized system,” he said.

The third panelist, Jerrod Westfahl, chief strategy officer at Innovative Livestock Services Inc., stressed that the livestock sector is not monolithic, and there is a lot of variation within livestock agriculture.

Westfahl encouraged companies looking to provide solutions that make a difference within livestock production to go out on the field.

“I don’t care if they grew up in agriculture,” he said. “You got to get them out into the field for real early on and do it for days, not for hours.”