A look at farming in 2020

The following is an interesting article I came across by Betsy Freese, livestock editor for “Successful Farming.”
What will a farmer look like in the year 2020? Hans-Wilhelm Windhorst gives us this portrait.
Windhorst is an economist and professor of rural development at the University of Vechta in Germany. He also is an international expert on intensive agriculture and the food industry.
Farmers of the future will be contractually bound to a production chain so their tasks will change, says Windhorst. In 2020, farmers will devote most of their time to management tasks.
The manual workload will decrease, thanks to increased mechanization of the production process. Certain tasks, such as manure application, no longer will be undertaken by farmers themselves but by agricultural contractors.
Farmers will manage their farms like mid-sized industrial enterprises, accessing information via modern communications technology.
Banking transactions will be carried out via home or mobile computers. Input such as fertilizer, feed, and fuel all will be purchased using E-commerce.
Farmers regularly will deliver production data to a central service organization, which then will make the information accessible to the farm’s contractual production partners.
This organization will evaluate the data and make suggestions for change.
All farm data will be shared and compared with other members in the farm production chain. This information then will be available from the data bank.
Farmers can access, at any time, an exact overview of their position within the production system.
In livestock production, high-performance transgenetic animals resistant to most virus diseases will be used. Microchips implanted in the livestock will enable farmers to call up, at any time via their computers, the development data of single animals or herds.
They will plan further action according to this information.
Specific feed mixes will be used according to the age and breeding of the animals, enabling high feed efficiency rates.
In crop production, farmers will utilize intelligent sensors to match fertilizer application with the actual requirements of the growing plants so soil and groundwater are not polluted.
Pesticides will only be applied after a risk calculation. These tasks then will be handled by a farm contractor using the most modern technology for absolute application precision.
It is not a question of welcoming or avoiding these changes, says Windhorst. They will be required to meet the demands of the new food system which will demand traceability from farm to consumer.
Those farmers who do not meet the requirement will be rapidly removed from the system. Those who adapt will remain.