Guest article: Technology is a regenerative ag tool, not a silver bullet, but we’re trapped in the belief that it can solve all our problems

Editor’s note: John Kempf is an entrepreneur, speaker, podcast host, crop health consultant, and designer of innovative soil and plant management systems. He founded Advancing Eco Agriculture and is the executive editor of Acres U.S.A. magazine.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of AgFunderNews.

Western society is enamored with technology. Our collective worldview is trapped in the belief that technology can solve all our problems: we just need to figure out which gene to snip, which sensor to use, which algorithm to run. This thinking is not only short-sighted, mechanistic and dominating; it is also the precise ethos that has led to the degenerative paradigm of agriculture that continues to destroy our ecosystems.

Technology has enabled advancements in agriculture that would have seemed impossible to previous generations. And technology isn’t just revolutionizing conventional agriculture; many successful regenerative techniques are also fueled by advanced technology.

A foundational tool that drives our agronomic decision-making is sap analysis, which has only been available for a bit over a decade. We now have effective laser weeders and miniature robots that can move between rows of crops, planting, controlling weeds and spraying, and drones are becoming a viable option for seeding some cover crops, broadcasting fertilizer and spraying. Sensors can measure soil moisture, some nutrient parameters, water status in plants and rates of evapotranspiration. There are developments on the horizon like hand-held sensors that will revolutionize our ability to measure the nutritional status of a crop in real time. 

But amidst our enthusiasm for technology and “toys,” we need to be extremely mindful of how the adoption of technological tools changes our state of being and, by extension, our relationship with the landscape and the plants and animals we are stewarding. 

It seems to me there are three primary ways that technology can change our internal state as we interact with an ecosystem: technology can change the quality of our perceptions, it can cause us to focus on surface remedies rather than root causes, and it can lead us to adopt the consciousness of the tool. Ultimately, many of these pathways lead to replacing people in the landscape — and thus to the degeneration of our farming systems. 

Changing the quality of our perceptions

Stewards who are closely connected to their land, crops and livestock are often aware of something being “off,” even when there are no obvious symptoms they can point to, visual or otherwise. Many times I have been with a herdsman who has said, “Hmm, there is something wrong with that cow,” even when they cannot describe what gave them that hunch. Or growers will comment that “something is off with this block; it just doesn’t feel right.” In many cases, that is as close as we can get to describing our hunch: “It just doesn’t feel right.”

This feeling is usually validated by analysis and found to be correct. Call it intuition, conscience, spiritual awareness, or whatever you will: we all recognize how fundamental these feelings are to good stewardship. 

Technology will never be able to replace this sense of intuition. But it can degrade it and cause it to be lost. The more we rely on technology and data to make decisions, the less connected we are to our intuitive knowing. Just as many have lost their sense of direction in a world with GPS on every phone, we can lose this sense of intuition when we rely too heavily on data to inform every decision. Like any gift, we need to use it or lose it. 

Focusing on surface remedies

The development of all types of sensors and the large amounts of data they generate has led to a fog of noise and has overwhelmed us with data of uncertain usefulness. The first step before collecting data needs to be asking the question, “Can this data provide actionable guidance?” If we don’t ask this question, our lives can become choked with technologically generated noise that doesn’t actually add much value. What we really need is what I like to call “manage-able data”: data upon which you can base management decisions. 

There is a great deal of data that we know is valuable and that we want to use to make better-informed decisions, but the volume is beyond our mental capacity to absorb and analyze. To help us make sense of large datasets, we develop algorithms or use deep learning and AI to analyze the data, and to reveal relationships that likely would never have been uncovered otherwise. Understanding these relationships can be very valuable. But the analysis can only include the factors in the dataset. What if the root cause of a problem is outside the dataset?

When a dataset includes the quality of the fruit being harvested and the nutritional status of the plants and soils where the crop was harvested from, the algorithms can reveal that premium-quality fruit is associated with certain levels of nutrients. The algorithms can even reveal key nutrient ratios that differentiate between premium- and poor-quality fruit. But the algorithm may not be able to describe the root cause — why those differences were produced in the first place. Perhaps one block was pruned several weeks earlier, or the microclimate on one farm is different from another. The heat stress may have been different, or the temperatures in spring may have been cooler for longer. 

Without all of this data being a part of the dataset, the algorithms will not be able to correlate the different conditions and cultural management practices with different outcomes. In living systems, everything is connected to everything else, and it isn’t possible to measure all the interactions. 

This is where human discernment and creative thinking is required. Algorithms cannot exercise their imagination. They also cannot identify by themselves the root cause of a cascade of associations. They may be able to identify a multitude of correlations, but those correlations still require interpretation and a human level of understanding. Without human understanding, we remain focused on surface remedies, and never address the problems at their source.

Adopting the consciousness of the tool

When there is a job to be done, it is easy for our own consciousness to merge with that of the tool. This is easy to observe with physical tools and jobs. When you need to prune an orchard, you can give a skilled person different tools, and the pruning job quickly begins to reflect the tool. Give the same person a pruning knife, power shears, or a hand chainsaw on different days, and the way the trees are pruned — the choice of pruning cuts made — rapidly becomes very different. We begin looking at the tree through the eyes of our tools. 

The same is true when clearing brush: a chainsaw, a brushhog and a bulldozer will produce completely different outcomes in the hands of the same person. We adapt the work to the capabilities of the tools — their consciousness, so to speak. So we had best be very deliberate about the tools we choose to use. 

In a world where the development of artificial intelligence is being celebrated as a goal to be pursued as quickly as possible, those of us who interact closely with the natural world would be wise to recognize that artificial intelligence is precisely that: artificial. The foundation of all types of “intelligence” — including emotional intelligence, intellectual intelligence, or intuitive intelligence (otherwise known as spiritual discernment) — is perception. How we perceive the world around us determines the scope of solutions we can imagine, and our creative ability. An intelligence that is defined as artificial is by default only capable of perspectives that are inherently artificial (unreal) and cannot possibly be an accurate reflection of a multifaceted, integrated, complex and holistic ecosystem. 

When we consider how we adopt the consciousness of our tools, we need to be particularly mindful of the use of artificial intelligence tools. How do we avoid adopting the consciousness of these tools and remain vigilantly conscious that the words and views regurgitated by a large language model are no substitute for our own critical thinking and our ability to discern what is real and what really matters?

The use of artificial intelligence to evaluate problems in the natural world seems to carry the potential of reducing or losing our capacity for critical analysis and ecosystems thinking.

Replacing people in the landscape

Many technological innovations are developed with the intention of replacing humans. I would argue that the highest and best design intention for technology is not to replace people, but to make them better: to amplify their unique ability to steward the land. 

We need more loving hearts and hands in the landscape, not fewer. We need more passionate, dedicated and caring people. Technology should facilitate that migration, not impede it. And it can — if we’re discerning about the technology we bring onto our farms and into our lives. We should embrace technology that consciously brings us closer to the natural world and should shun any technology that builds barriers between us and the natural world.

Technology should be designed to sharpen our observations and intuition, not dull them. Technology should be designed to help us ask better questions, to inspire our imaginations, to encourage us to explore. And technology should be designed to help us avoid adopting the consciousness of the tool. In short, technology should be designed to amplify the unique gifts that enable us to be good stewards. 

With these parameters to guide us, we can develop and use technology to propel agriculture into a future in which more people can live a prosperous, loving life on the land, heal our soils, and grow abundant healthy plants, livestock and people.