This AP article is basically just another of those "Look at how all these rustic industries are being transformed by the power of information technology!" but I think it's pretty cool, anyway. The CIO angle, though, is considering how this sort of trend plays out in the long term. It's not a new story, after all; the transition of IT from a powerhouse for the mega-corporation to an enabler for the small to midsize business has played out in many industries. As the article says, large corporate farms have had GPS tractor auto-pilots for a long time now... but only recently, with a combination of good market prices for their goods and cheaper technology, have smaller farming operations had an opportunity to buy in to the technology.

I wonder if it will continue to have the same beneficial effects moving forward on such a basis, however. In many SMBs, what we've seen is technology being adopted without long-term plan or cohesion (the result of a lack, at such levels, of CIO direction) and turn out to cost far more than it saves in the fullness of time. Are farmers doomed to repeat this cycle as well? Or will CIOs or consultants step in to fill the gap? Or will ag-IT (I just made that up) skip the step and become primarily outsourced or service-based and not require such management in the first place?

Spending a lot of time getting from point A to B in a slow, diesel powered vessel myself these days, I can well understand the value of the GPS based tractor drivers. My own marine autopilot drives far more efficiently than I do, not having to eyeball the route or guess at the effects of currents or wind. I save a considerable amount of fuel using it myself, and it was easy to install and is easy to run. If ag-IT maintains that level of simplicity, then there's probably no reason to layer on management or consultative overhead. The question will be, will it continue to manifest as such simple plug and play components, or become more complex? And beyond that, if it can continue to be simplified and work well without all the overhead, what can more conventional IT operations do to duplicate it?