There are some three million truck drivers in the U.S. today, and another 200,000 in Canada.
Except, their jobs depend on their employers not using the self-driving technology that is already in use on farms all across North America.
While we’re all fixated on all the disruptions that Donald Trump is creating, most of us seem to be mere bystanders to the equally large disruptions that technological advance is causing, or is about to cause.
I tend to veer away from doomsayers, but it’s worth an hour of your time to type “artificial intelligence” into Google sometime and then wander about in the kind of extremism that the foes and friends of the Donald are quite at home with.
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But also check out someone like Andrew McAfee, an economist at MIT who puts great effort into toning down the rhetoric, but who still insists that it’s time we all started thinking seriously about how to live in a world where, suddenly, intelligent technology is putting white-collar workers out of work, not just truck drivers.
Farmers have long felt that they are special cases in this debate with their tireless argument that if we hope to feed the world, we must base our decisions on science.
We as a society can somehow figure out how to distribute the food in order to prevent starvation, farmers tend to believe, but only if we have access to the tools we need to grow the food in the first place.
As more jobs come under threat from artificial intelligence, I suspect, we’ll continue to see farmers on the one hand clamouring for better access to technology, while other professions, unions and even whole industries rush to adopt new rules or regulations that put the brakes on that new technology.
But even in agriculture we tend to underestimate the power of technology. Despite the fact that technology has been uninterrupted in its success at whittling down the amount of time it takes to farm an acre, and although it has been equally successful at enabling an uninterrupted increase in average farm size, we tend to think these trends have pretty much reached their limits.
So, let’s ask the question again: how many farmers do we really need?
But before you reach for the Prozac, let’s also take another look at what MIT’s McAfee is telling us. Technology isn’t only a threat, he says. It also puts more power into the hands of innovative entrepreneurs.
It’s why I don’t believe that Canada will ever be farmed by six farmers, because not only are today’s farmers better capitalized than ever, they are being led by farmers who are better than ever at protecting and enhancing that capital. More than ever before, they excel at being innovative without putting their farms at risk.
Now, the big question is, how can we ensure the next generation is even better than today’s at these essential business skills?
Are we getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
