New Technologies In Agriculture Are Increasing Farm Profitability

Sitting in front of my office is a two-row, horse-drawn planter. I inherited it from a ranch I bought where it sat from the day it was last used, more than 100 years prior. If all went well, you could plant four to five acres in a day, working from sunup to sundown. Today’s multi-row planters can plant up to 1,500 acres per day.

As a farmer, farmland owner and CEO of a farmland investment platform, when I look at farmland as an asset, I look at both its history and its potential. How has it performed, and what’s next?

Over the past century, the way we farm has completely transformed. Mechanical engineering and advancement allowed the transition from horse-pulled plows, sowing seed by hand and back-breaking harvests. In the 1940s, tractors and mechanical equipment replaced manual processes and horses. Farmers who could once only tend a dozen or so acres found the new capability of managing hundreds of acres. Now, as we forge our way into a new millennium, farmers have access to a tool just as tantamount and just as revolutionary: technology.