The Evolving Nature of Precision Ag: Past as Prologue

For someone interested in how farmers and agribusiness managers make decisions, the past few decades have been particularly intriguing. As a young faculty member in the 1980s, I was among a group of faculty who successfully lobbied the Dean of the then College of Agriculture to buy Apple II and IBM PC microcomputers to use with students in the classroom. The course instituted at that time continues today, however, the content and the technology have markedly changed. In agriculture our information technology-based tools also have evolved. We’ve become familiar with use of the internet, precision agriculture, Big Data, and digital agriculture. Now Generative AI is the “next big thing”.