Get in the game.
Prime Future 149: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy
I was recently talking with a super progressive farmer who stays pretty engaged with the agtech ecosystem. He was describing a recent interaction in which a robotics startup had come to his farm with their prototype. He began the day thinking the equipment could be used in one way, but by the end of the day he'd realized the use case on his farm was actually something completely different.
"I wouldn't have even thought about the other use case if we hadn't had the full conversation and demo. I wouldn't have even known what questions to ask, questions that ultimately led to the light bulb going off. Being in these conversations doesn't always give me the answer, but it at least gives me the chance to know what to ask."
...it gives me the chance to ask better questions.
This jumped out at me as the differentiator among early adopters of any kind (corporates, producers, etc). Being in the game doesn't mean you have all the answers right out of the gate. By definition, emerging stuff (trends or tech or markets) create a lot of unanswered questions early on.
But the only way to get to informed answers is to ask smart questions.
And the only way to even know what smart questions to ask is to be engaged, to be in the game, in some way.
This feels like one of those insights that is super easy to dismiss because it's so intuitive and obvious when you hear it, yet it's easy to not put into practice because making time for things that aren't going to impact us today or tomorrow is hard. The urgent, both important and unimportant, usually win over the non-urgent and only potentially important someday down the road.
The only way to wrap your arms around emerging trends & innovation is to get in the emerging trends & innovation game.
Making the decision to be in the emerging innovation game is a conscious decision that requires freeing up some capacity somewhere to prioritize it.
It's also another hallmark characteristic of lunatic farmers.
What's an emerging ag trend or innovation that you really understood only once you got in the game?