Artificial intelligence (AI) is often seen as something complex and distant, but it doesn’t have to be. The best starting point is often the simplest one: the work you already know best.
What is one thing that you spend time on that feels like it should be easier?
Tracy Soper, senior director of data excellence at Keystone Cooperative, says that question is as good a place as any to start. It’s important to realize it’s not about answers at this point – it is about asking the right questions.
Rather than “learning AI,” Angel Andaya, manager of digital solutions for Silver Support, a managed development center supporting operations, finance, digital solutions, information technology and automation services, suggests identifying repetitive daily tasks and asking how they can be simplified, automated or made more accurate — whether that’s livestock health alerts or improving daily operational planning and farm decision support.
Will You Shape the Landscape or Will it Shape You?
Over the next five years, AI will become more embedded across industries, supporting not only large-scale problem solving but also automating routine tasks, improving decision-making and enabling more data-driven operations.
So, what is the role of farmers and industry leaders in this process?
“The opportunity lies in preparation and active participation,” Andaya says. “AI will become part of modern agriculture, and we should not only adopt it but also help shape how it is designed. The understanding of land, livestock and daily agriculture and livestock realities is critical in building tools that actually work in the field.”
At the same time, she points out this should be a shared effort. Technical teams need to go beyond system building and spend time understanding real operations and challenges directly from the people who experience them.
“The future of AI in agriculture will depend on collaboration — between those who understand the problem on the ground and those who build the solutions,” Andaya says. “When aligned, AI becomes technology built with agriculture, not just used in it.”
Don’t Lose the Hallway Conversation
For Jullien Avondo, solutions architect for Silver Support, his concern for the future isn’t AI itself. It’s passive AI.
“Everyone uses ChatGPT or other models, and it’s a genuinely powerful tool,” Avondo says. “But I’m seeing people use it to write client-facing emails where the prompt was essentially ‘write me a professional email and make it sound good.’ The email comes out fine. It suffices. But it’s results without direction. A powerful tool with a weak builder behind it.”
What worries Avondo most long-term about passive AI is what quietly gets lost.
“It’s the hallway conversation. The peer-to-peer exchange where someone actually thinks something through out loud. The instinct built over years of experience,” he reflects. “When critical thinking gets routinely outsourced – even in small ways – it erodes.”
He thinks genuine human critical thinking and expression in the next five years will become rare.
“Rare things become valuable,” Avondo points out. “The question is whether your people will still have it.”
A 10-Minute Daily Drill for the Digital Age
Avondo encourages a daily AI exercise. Take 10 minutes every day, using real work and not hypothetical prompts or tutorials, to exercise your AI muscles.
He recommends this structure concept:
0:00-1:00: Pick one real task from your day. He says this can be an email, a client message or even a problem you’re stuck on. The important thing is to pick real work only.
1:00-3:00: Write it yourself first. This is supposed to be rough, raw, no overthinking — and no skipping this step, Avondo says. The moment you skip it, you’ve outsourced your brain. This is the part that he cares about most.
3:00-6:00: Prompt with precision. Avondo says this is the real skill. Give AI a role, a specific goal, an audience and a tone rooted in human traits — not vague words like “professional.” Then paste your own draft and ask it to improve while keeping your voice.
6:00-8:00: Challenge the output, he encourages. Ask AI what’s weak or generic about what it just gave you, he suggests. Compare your original to the AI version to the challenged version.
8:00-10:00: Final judgment. Avondo says this is when you decide and you deliver.
Think For Yourself
Avondo says he’s excited about the future of AI to help grow farms and businesses, but he urges people to not become complacent.
“This isn’t an anti-AI stance,” he says. “It’s about making sure that when AI is in the room, the person using it is still the one thinking. That matters in every industry. And I’d argue it matters especially in agriculture and the livestock industry where judgment and experience are everything and institutional knowledge runs several decades.”
