Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84OCTOBER 2016 SEEDWORLD.COM / 27 Dealer Enquiries Welcome Dealer Enquiries Welcome 1.800.418.9461 convey-all.com convey-all.com convey-all.com convey-all.com Looking for reliable equipment for your agri–business? Check out our extensive line of Portable Belt Conveyors. We also produce an large array of Commercial and Standard Seed Tenders. Our products are produced in North America with North American made components. Contact your local dealer, ask them about CONVEY-ALL! think tank. The implications of that are significant. So what will life be like less than a decade from now? Technological developments tend to go like this, Wallner notes. Say you take 30 steps forward in a linear motion — how far will you go? Twenty- five or 30 meters. But if you do this on an exponential basis, where will it take you? Thirty steps will take you 25 times around the globe. “Right now, we are used to think- ing in a linear way. That’s all about to change,” Wallner says. “Things are about to start moving very fast.” The industry is now able to predict the future, quite literally, Wallner notes. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has already pre- dicted, by thinking exponentially, that the world population will be 9 billion by 2050. More people to feed, but no extra farmland. The question is how to tackle it. The key is big data. According to Wallner, farmers need to be given the tools that will allow them to make good use of the massive amounts of data. “How can big data be converted into actionable solutions? We must analyze data to predict the future,” he says. “Making predictions for the next 20 years is like going back 20 years. Think how much change has occurred.” Wallner foresees 50 billion con- nected devices on this planet by 2050. “Everything around us will be connected and used to control things in every aspect of our lives,” he says. Furthermore, smartphones are on their way out. “The way we interact with the machine is changing,” he says. That means the consumer’s relationship with their food is changing, too. There will be no more keyboards — face, emotion and thought recognition will be paramount, he says. Devices will be hands-free. Information on our food and how it’s produced will be more readily accessible. Food and Identity “We have stronger links between health and food. People care how food is produced and served, support for local food is big, traceability, and the minimization of food waste are all important,” Wallner adds. He argues food plays a big role in our identity, and the ag industry must manage that process to influence consumers. “If you manage to convince your customer that you care how foods are produced, you have a fairly good chance to enter that segment and use food products for identity manage- ment.” That will involve companies involv- ing themselves in the data layer. “A lot of new business models focus on exactly this layer,” he says. “If you’re not, you will run into problems reaching the customer. You have to be present in this layer as much as possible.” SW