Opening Thoughts:
Damn if feels good to be a gangsta… A favorite moment of mine from the movie Office Space link…it’s explicit FYI. Just keeping it real as the kids say. This is how I feel these days when I post my wild memes I have to be honest sometimes. Just throwing down odd reality bombs I guess that most others can’t. With that said, I’ll be putting forth a new version of that soon around a video podcast so make sure to look for that when I release more. The first one will be quite interesting to say the least….
As for the above meme, well I just find it sort of funny as Elon is clearly quite a controversial figure. If you didn’t gather, I based it off the famous speech of Robert Oppenheimer, “I have become Death, Destroyer of worlds.” As for the data privacy part, just the Twitter/X debacle alone can make you wonder how in time that could play into that connection. I’m sure there won’t be much, but we like to have fun here.
To dive in now, I continue my plan in sharing a recently popular LinkedIn post instead of writing a whole new thing, but also adding some extra fluff to it all. This first one is a very recent post climbing the latter about John Deere and as such that is the main topic today. It sort of was my plan to write more on the deal last week anyway, so here is a reflection of that all plus a little extra.
Just Trolling the Competition:
I think this picture above says enough and is more or less the main premise of what is going on with Ag Data. From the newest SpaceX Starlink news to just what Deere does, they are owning the space well beyond anyone else.
It’s not even the just these machinery groups shown. It’s the whole industry. Now this is mainly in regard to farmer data specifically, but with their OPs Center they more or less have the keys to what others can and can’t do with farmers in mind.
I’ve written about it before that some are making large purchase decisions based on tech now. It’ll continue to grow, but I do think there is a limit. The cost of their equipment and hardware compared to others is a lot higher. To some it doesn’t matter, to most it’s still a big deal.
One thing regardless of what JD is doing or what the rest are, I think many forget some basic truths in all of the tech any of them provide. In bold below…..
MANY ASSUME THAT MOST FARMERS HAVE ACCESS TO ALL THE HIGH TECH FEATURES! THEY DON’T!
I get all the cool features and news items that constantly come out like the Starlink stuff and stuff at CES or whatever. The reality is most are years away from even caring to use that tech if they even will be able to afford it on the used market.
The AgTech industry fails at understanding certain dynamics like that at times. Be it the newest software, sensor, AI/ML, dataset, image, or whatever tool tied to all of those things.
From the investors that recently came in and found out, to the startups that are dealing with the same, so many thought or still think it works like Apple or social media or something. A new phone/app comes out and like 25% of people upgrade either to the newest or latest before that or upload that app. Ag doesn’t work even close to that.
While there are so many comparisons to John Deere now and Apple, I guess while I get it, it can’t be the same as the end users are not the same types of users. Sure, there is cross over in certain things but it’s different.
Overall, we have to remember that cool new tech just doesn’t cross over in Ag in any real fast paced way. We concentrate on the press releases way too much when most of that stuff is a ways out, even years from being on doorsteps of most.
We are caught on the what could be, not what is or what did work. More or less, when you see all the big new fancy tech or the big new acquisitions just remember that that stuff is years out from probably even making a dent to most anyone in the normal Ag ecosystem.
To reflect on this post…
We are all to blame for AgTech adoption. We push too many new ideas and too fast while sometimes not focusing on what was already released. While it’s fine to strive forward to create the newest and best, we forget most farmers and the ones that support them are using fairly older tech or processes still.
That’s also part of the problem with complacency in what we get used to. Maybe the real issue is the gap between the old and the new. Honestly, I see more still use older AgTech practices that became time tested before than all the stuff that has came out in last 10 years with the major influx in money. Yet we still are pushing all the new and latest to replace that.
If you really look into it, John Deere really hasn’t shifted that focus much from what they always were doing. Making sure their Autosteer and Monitors were the easiest and best to use. All their legacy stuff works that way too so that others down the road can use it without many issues of support. They always pushed their dealer network affect and scale. Then they added a simple place to add data. Others just tried to catch up and are still doing that. Maybe they can’t win and that is also part of the plan.
All in all, we have to all understand that looking into the future of AgTech is great, but Agriculture is all about understanding trends from the past. From weather to markets, it’s in the blood of Ag. John Deere knows that, that’s why they dominate.
In Closing:
While it seems clear that Deere has been and is winning the battle against its foes, I’m more curious on what they are really planning behind the scenes that we won’t know.
I have some theories around their main goals. Here they are via some main points.
Before their Operations Center, it was basically if it isn’t all Deere Hardware and Software it won’t work well. That forced initial traction.
Then they began to open up once they had the most adoption and became somewhat stagnant in growth around precision hardware. This was around 60% overall, but they had close to 100% within their own machinery.
The goal switched to let’s get all of our stuff in our stuff to let’s get our stuff in others stuff i.e. competitors machinery.
Now they pushed Ops Center further through API connections with other software to be the central core exchange and marketplace to force industry adoption everywhere. Basically, if you weren’t connected to Ops Center you were no one in the AgTech landscape.
So they own most of the precision ag hardware space and now are the single largest connector of Ag Data, what’s next? My theory is from them its time to lock up the shop and force a bigger narrative.
That narrative is broad likely, but it revolves around control and privacy. They can control by starting to charge outsiders to keep the connections in Ops Center especially for more strategic and unique groups. Others will almost have to comply.
This gives them a privacy narrative to farmers saying they are the place to be safe and provides them more control of where data is going from one place.
Adding more options to receive data from wherever via things like Starlink enhance these narratives as more data comes in automatically.
Overall, JD closes the open doors to most via enhanced features which will be also connected to hardware which enhances their pull into other machinery and systems. The other leaders are already in their so now JD will just squeeze them to conform or make them get out as they’d be dead weight.
Large groups will market and push these enhanced features to push the same narrative as they don’t have a choice to the amount of data JD can hold and control compared to themselves.
In the end, they opened the doors using their popularity and power to latch on to everyone that did the work to connect.
Now they want to use that to push everyone in being the central player around Ag Data by closing the doors slowly and using their Hardware and/or paying to connect to Ops Center as the only new doorway in and out of their ecosystem.
Fun stuff right? I could be way off and wrong to the fullest extent, but it’s how I’m seeing it with bits and pieces I’ve observed over the years. Is this a good or bad thing? Well, there is pro and cons to it all though what choice would we have? They are John freakin Deere. More or less, we will conform and live with it. What’s new….
Thanks for reading Easy Observations! Please Share, Subscribe, and Comment if you would be so kind. I’d also be happy to get together and meet if you’d like to talk more in-depth about AgTech. Feel free to contact me at my website. All the best!