GERHARD BURGER - Hollard Insure and Farmingportal.co.za and Agri News Net - Young Agri Writers awards 2026
The crop you cannot see
Every farmer knows the smell of the first spring rain. The first signal that the new season is approaching. With that rain, the keys are put in the ignition, the wheels start turning and implements break ground. Every season, farmers plant thousands of seeds to grow millions of tons of food to feed the billions of mouths across the globe. Yet along with their planted crops grows another crop that cannot be seen, cannot be touched and cannot be smelled. It does not fill silos, and it cannot be loaded on trucks, yet it guides every decision they make. This crop is, of course, data.
Even before a seed is planted and before fertilisers are applied, farmers are collecting, or rather harvesting, data from their enterprises. Everything from soil samples, rainfall, temperature and market movements is collected, analysed and studied again and again to ensure that the correct decisions are made. Decisions that are invaluable in the first step that kicks off a supply chain that creates jobs and feeds billions of people across the globe.
Harvesting data for informed decision-making is not a new or modern concept. Agriculture has been doing this since the first plough broke ground and the first blade cut a stalk, but, like all agricultural technologies, data collection and analysis keep evolving and have recently made a huge leap forward. This, of course being the advancement and commercialisation of artificial intelligence. For the first time in history, data collected over centuries can be analysed with the press of a button. Within seconds, data transforms into information, information into insights, and insights into knowledge.
Progress, though, rarely comes without a trade-off. Shifting from the ox-drawn ploughs to mechanised tractors led to the loss of more affordable soil cultivation methods, the need for more advanced maintenance, and the acquisition of additional skills. The same applies to the massive influx of knowledge that artificial intelligence suddenly makes available. Just as tractors replaced muscle with steel, data is replacing uncertainty with confidence through evidence.
The invention of the tractor didn’t make farmers better. It allowed better farmers to do more and grow more. Agriculture has always been a competition where only the best of the best survive. Those who refused to adapt to engine-driven tractors were left behind; similarly. farmers who fail to adapt to data-driven decision-making will be left behind as well. That does not, however, imply that there will no longer be room for gut feeling and intuition. After all, any farmer worth their salt will tell you that farming, caring for your soils and livestock, is a talent and not just a learned skill. It runs in your blood, and very few of our ever-growing population have what it takes to be a farmer. A farmer's intuition isn't magic. In fact, a farmer's gut feeling comes from the same place as AI’s insights. It is, in its purest sense, pattern recognition. A farmer might say, "That cloud doesn't look right," "this field doesn't smell healthy," or "something feels off." Those observations are built on countless hours in the field, seeing patterns and collecting data through lived experience. They often detect problems before any sensor or report does, based on these experiences.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest misconceptions about modern agriculture is that it's becoming entirely data-driven. In reality, the best farmers don't follow data blindly. They combine experience, instinct, and evidence. It is this very fact that makes data an extremely valuable crop, but also an extremely dangerous tool in the wrong hands. The world needs the information provided by data to gain knowledge and make informed decisions, but at the same time, it cannot afford to lose the human element with its lived experiences.
It is therefore farmers’ right to protect their data and cultivate it like any other crop, to use it to their advantage and keep it out of the hands of those without a true farmer’s instinct. But it is just as much their responsibility to make use of tools at their disposal, like artificial intelligence, and let data earn its place alongside experience for more informed decision-making.
Gut feeling without data becomes bias. Data without judgement becomes blind obedience. The farmers who’ll thrive in the season to come will be those who know how to cultivate both.
GERHARD BURGER
I have been an agricultural economist at Grain SA for the past 2 years. I recently graduated from their internship program as a Junior Economist.My core responsibilities include agricultural market research to enhance and maintain market transparency, with a special focus on the sunflower and groundnut crops in South Africa. I am also responsible for maintaining and developing internal data systems and structures. I completed my studies at the University of Pretoria in 2024, where I obtained a bachelor's degree in agribusiness management and an honours degree in Agricultural Economics.
