Can AI give small farms an edge? One Marathon County farmer thinks so

Part II of our series in AI and farming, and how low-cost AI can help smaller farms compete

Adam Baumann uses AI tech in his small farm in Marathon. Much of that tech is low cost, helping to improve efficiency and yields without large capital outlays.

Driving out to Adam Baumann’s farm in Marathon, you wouldn’t necessarily see anything amiss. There’s a large barn, there are fields of crops such as soybeans, and Baumann’s dad greets me as I drive up.

But Baumann, who brands himself The Digital Farmer online, is using a lot of tech with artificial intelligence.

That manifests in two different ways: One, with technology that’s powered by AI. He gets satellite images of his farm fields every two weeks, which he then analyzes with AI systems, for instance.

And, he uses the chat windows on the backend. They help him with research, crop analysis and communication.

In a story last week, we highlighted Brian Reisinger’s book Land Rich, Cash Poor, about the disappearance of small farms in Wisconsin and the country at large. Reisinger in his interview with us highlighted the potential for scale-neutral AI tech to help small farmers.

Baumann seems to illustrate that concept perfectly. He has an interesting background. He grew up on a farm but went to school for graphic design. But he found himself back drawn back to the farm, now the fourth generation running the business.

But he’s the first generation to also be a YouTuber. He has 3,100 subscribers on YouTube and 26,000 followers on Facebook. But on YouTube, some of his videos outperform his channel’s size, and a video with his son driving a grain cart for the first time hit more than 58,000 views.

That’s not really his business though, Baumann explains as we stand near the soybean field in the middle of the week. The real business is still the farm, and AI is shaping what he can do with his farm as a smaller farmer.

Even more interesting is the tech that’s on the horizon. Stuff Baumann described to me sounded like something straight out of a sci-fi novel.

But Baumann’s use is an example of scale-neutral AI technology used in farming — or put more plainly, AI tech that doesn’t cost farmers an arm and a leg. It’s part of what can give smaller farmers an edge when technology usually comes with a large price tag, giving larger operations an advantage because they can afford the capital outlay.

I came back for the tech

Adam Baumann looks up a plant through an AI system on his phone. It’s one of the simple ways he uses artificial intelligence in his farming practice.

Baumann reaches into his field of soybeans to show me one example of how AI helps him on a daily basis. He pulls out a plant impossibly hidden amongst the crops that is actually a weed. I shake my head, knowing I wouldn’t have seen that weed amongst the very similar looking soybeans if I’d stared at it all day.