From addressing the farm labor crisis to enabling precision agriculture: Igino Cafiero, CEO, Bear Flag Robotics

The Restless Ones

Human history shows that agriculture was one of the earliest innovations. It allowed populations to shift from a hunting and gathering to feeding the masses through organized efforts to grow crops. For decades, technology may have appeared to accelerate much faster in other industries, but advancements in equipment, seeds and planting tactics have continued to increase farm production. Now, 5G connectivity is about to unleash the next wave of innovation in farming, with smart equipment and backend data allowing farmers to do more with less, a critical need in an industry with finite resources.

In this episode of The Restless Ones, we sit with Igino Cafiero, CEO of Bear Flag Robotics—a subsidiary of industry-leader John Deere, and pioneer in bringing autonomy and intelligence to the world of tractors. From engineer to founder, Igino’s passion for solving problems—especially ones with such meaning as feeding the world—is palpable. Igino believes autonomy is just one part of a connectivity-enabled path to helping farmers increase yields through the use of smart sensors, data and machine learning. As we learned, the farm of the future may already be here.

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