Contrary to popular tropes about unintelligent farmers, agriculture has long been in the forefront of technological advances. Farmers have developed and quickly embrace world-changing inventions like tractors, planters, bailers, the cotton gin, and harvesters that replaced backbreaking work that used to be done by hundreds of hands.

In yet another dramatic and astounding embracing of technology, John Deere’s announced its ExactShot planting system that can plant and fertilize 6,600 seeds in 3 seconds.

The system is made up of 54 modular electrified robots and sensors that register when each individual seed goes into the soil. As this occurs, the robot will spray only the amount of fertilizer needed, about 0.2 ML, directly onto the seed at the exact moment it goes into the ground. Instead of needing to continually spray, the targeted fertilizer approach can reduce the amount of fertilizer used by over 60%.

This level of automation means that farmers like Todd Westerfeld, a fifth-generation Texas farmer, can plant wheat, soybeans, corn, and cotton on 5,500 acres with only three people. This is an astounding feat of automation and technology.

Being a farmer today means managing million dollar annual budgets with razor thin margins. I would bet the average farmer handles much more responsibility than 90% of the flashy marketing, sales, or leadership jobs you see on Linkedin. Farmers must manage constantly changing global financial and commodity price conditions, become an expert at financial and production risk management, understanding advanced soil and chemical testing/mapping technologies, stay on top of the latest farm implement innovations, and do all of this with single digit profit margins (in most cases). Nobody else does so much for so little.