Episode description
Dr. Jeremy Williams is the Vice President of Biotechnology and Agricultural Productivity Innovations at Monsanto, one of the largest modern agricultural companies in the world that develops products and tools to help farmers grow more crops and make use of resources more efficiently. His responsibilities include leading the chemistry and trait research teams that assist farmers to succeed through innovative means such as artificial intelligence. His ultimate goal is to create a discovery pipeline that streamlines projects that affect agricultural development into commercialization.
Jeremy joins me today to discuss the future of agriculture and how artificial intelligence and machine learning can impact the agriculture industry. He describes the concept of artificial intelligence, its current applications, and why he believes these technologies can create new job opportunities throughout the agriculture industry. He also explains the difference between machine learning and deep learning, how artificial intelligence can improve productivity and sustainability within the industry and shares his perspective on the future of the agriculture industry.
“Over time, there’s going to be increasing desires from society to have agriculture be even more sustainable. The development of automation, the use of data science, is going to help us meet those demands from society.” – Dr. Jeremy Williams
This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast:
- How he ended up working with Monsanto and his responsibilities.
- What is artificial intelligence and how is it used in the ag industry?
- The difference between Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
- Applications of artificial intelligence on the farm.
- How machine learning can impact the ability to discover new crop protection chemistries.
- How artificial intelligence can help discover new insect control traits for expression in plants.
- How humans and artificial intelligence can work together.
- The impact that artificial intelligence and machine learning can have on future job opportunities in the agriculture industry.
- How the Bayer-Monsanto acquisition can impact agriculture innovation.
- Advice for new ag-tech entrepreneurs.
- His predictions for the future of the ag industry.
Dr. Jeremy Williams’ Tips for New Ag-Tech Entrepreneurs:
- The quality of your team is very important.
- Remember: You don’t know everything as an organization. Be externally focused. Partner aggressively. Use the leverage of a much bigger ecosystem than you can build yourself with your organization.
- The ability to fail, learn, and recover is critical.
- Be patient, but also be persistent and tenacious.
Connect with Dr. Jeremy Williams:
Check Out Our Sponsor for the “Sustainability at Scale” Series
Have you ever heard of Marrone’s BIO WITH BITE? Marrone Bio Innovation offers crop pest protection for the modern organic and conventional production systems. To make sure every grower using their products realize the best possible return on investment, Marrone invests time and resources to thoroughly test and demonstrate the efficacy of those new state of the art products. With serious trial data to back it up! You can see more and connect directly with Marrone by visiting them at www.marronebio.com
Marrone is very proud to support The Future Of Agriculture blog...