This is an assignment done by a student in regard to "Big Data" and sustainable farming.

We are asked to comment on what she did. Please help.

The evolving data that has been an ongoing increase by companies in order to improve quality production, retaining employers, and improving an organizational culture, has helped address the ongoing challenges, sustainability, and support towards farming. From reading the article about how data has empowered sustainable farming, key factors of changing and innovating ways to encourage the use of big data is from an estimate that $$by the middle of the $21$st century, the world$$s population that is expected to reach nearly $9\mathrm{.}7$ billion people, a $33$ percent increase over today$$s population,$$ that has motivated global food productions to having to find different methods to provide for the growing demands of the population. $($Bateman$,$ P$.376,2019)$ Another key driver of needing to utilize data to change, is the advocacy for climate change and sustainability$-$ while the population continues to rise and the demand for food production increases, there$$s also an importance of conserving freshwater resources, as $$agriculture consumes $70$ percent of the world$$s freshwater supply.$($Bateman$,$ P$.376,2019)$

In the scenario where there$$s an oversight of a corn farming operation with $50$ full$-$time employees, I can understand that there$$s a need to change the ways of farm production towards the market, while also understanding and empathizing with the concerns or perspectives any farmers may have from the reliance of their own methods of gathering information. To unfreeze, move, and refreeze the employees$$ views about using data and technology for future purposes, some ideas would be implementing internal development, purchasing, licensing, and developing research partnerships to help ease and align the process of adopting technology to create an organizational culture.

To utilize the unfreezing process, we would utilize internal development by creating education and awareness programs to help educate the employees about the benefits of integrating data towards farming development. Ways of emphasizing these methods would be through purchasing methods; I would emphasize the cost effectiveness of purchasing technology, and share any success stories from other farm productions that have implemented data to help their business thrive. Examples would be finding agriculture businesses such as Wolfgang van Loeper, the founder and CEO of MySmartFarm, who $$structured data better to find insights to balance soils and fertilizer appropriately, to eventually work with soil moisture data, and further refining farming techniques.$($DataScienceWeekly$,$ n$.$d$.)$ Farmers like Wolfgang himself have found benefits to utilizing data with science to find more efficient ways that other farmers could benefit from, and by integrating this type of education, or sharing any success stories, would help address any concerns the company may have in the moment and find a competitive edge through other$$s success.

Because this is a process that not everyone could accept right away, the company could implement further internal development systems by creating a performance$-$based system related to the integration of utilizing data for farming. We would have the company set aside a budget for the initial fiscal year of promoting courses paid by the business to better understand data$$s purpose with agriculture; with individuals who do take those opportunities, the company would encourage it as a way for career advancement opportunities, and opportunities to pilot projects to benefit the business. The development of moving staff to integrate technology and data is something that won$$t happen right away, but would take months or a few years before moving forward and refreezing strategically.

Overtime, the process of refreezing would eventually be established, where there would still be an involved development of educating, encouraging, and supporting employees adapting to new technology, as well as ongoing training for employees wanting to acquire new skills within the company. Because of the small employment by the farming company, I would encourage our company to eventually license or form research partnerships with third$-$parties who emphasize collecting data according to our needs, and wanting to collaborate with farmers to help aid agricultural businesses. The reason behind either licensing or forming research partnerships would be for cost$-$effective measures, as well as being able to access unique technologies without the need for any in$-$house development due to the size of staff and production for our business. Examples such as $$in China, where Data scientists worked with farmers to use machine learning to predict crop yields. This information was then used to determine how much water and fertilizer to use, which helped farmers reduce wastage and increase profits. This type of farming reduced costs and increased yields and had a lower environmental impact than traditional farming methods.$($Narasimman$,2023)$

There$$s multiple ways to strategize to align the development of technology with the farm or company$$s needs, but I personally find that through the new ideas we$$re uncomfortable with, that the combination of education, incentive, and ongoing support company wise and through third$-$parties, can help better understand other options to profit a greater well$-$being for individuals and farming companies. There are other ideas of approaching how to encourage new ideas for this scenario$-$ other methods such as technology trading, acquisition of technology owners, joint ventures, and other methods, overall can be understood that each of them can be utilized depending on the business' needs or the individual's perspective of what is best for the business. The ultimate goal is to gain different perspectives and ideas to aid the business in new challenges and unending skills required in a developing society.