Brianna Elliot was the first person to hold the title Smart Ag Techronomist at Olds College, a role built to sit between agronomy and the technology stack now running on a modern farm. Recorded at the inaugural AgSmart, she describes the applied research projects on the college Smart Farm, from soil sensor validation to a regenerative pasture project to correlating corn sampling against NDVI, and explains why she believes most farm technology disappointment comes down to time and connectivity rather than the tools themselves. Her advice to a producer wanting to start somewhere is deliberately unglamorous.
When Brianna Elliot took the job, nobody had held the title before. Smart Ag Techronomist, a word Olds College was still deciding whether it had invented, describing a role that sits between the agronomist who reads a field and the technician who keeps the equipment talking to itself.
Recorded live at the first AgSmart, Elliot manages the applied research projects on the college Smart Farm and works as the college agronomist, with a small cattle operation of her own west of town. Her explanation for why farm technology disappoints people is unsentimental, and it is usually not the technology.
What's Inside
- What a techronomist actually does, from the first person to carry the title
- Inside the Smart Farm: soil sensor validation, a regenerative project on pasture, and correlating corn samples against NDVI with students doing the sampling
- Why she says time and connectivity break more farm technology than the technology does
- What happens when a product ships before it is ready and lands in a producer's busiest fortnight
- The one place she tells growers to start, which is not a piece of equipment
- Why startups keep bringing unproven kit to a two thousand acre college farm
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