The coronavirus pandemic is demonstrating just how critical farming and agriculture are to Americans and to the nation as a whole. It’s also shining a spotlight on the importance of farmers and farm workers. Critical and essential.

Less discussed though is the serious farm labor shortage in America, a fact most Americans aren’t aware of even though it’s been the case for many years.

The coronavirus pandemic has also caused a revaluation by Americans of the relative importance of agriculture to their personal lives and for the country. A case in point is that for the first time in its 20 years of tracking Americans’ views of various business and industry sectors, farming and agriculture came out as most important (No. 1) in the Gallup Organization’s 2020 annual survey on the subject, which was released in late September. The Gallup Poll is among the most respected assessments of public opinion in the U.S.

This renewed national focus on farming and agriculture, along with the newly elevated esteem for farmers by the public, offers the perfect opportunity to address the critical labor shortage that exists on our farms.

There’s essentially only two ways to solve the farm labor shortage in America. The first involves the passage of comprehensive immigration reform that includes a farm worker provision — or at the very least legislation that focuses on a guest worker program that makes it possible for more immigrants to come to the U.S. to work on our farms. Sadly, I have little hope of either one of these two legislative reforms being enacted in the near future. I hope I’m wrong.

Technology is the second way we can address the farm labor shortage.

Ag technology entrepreneurs as well as major corporations are already making significant advances in the application of technology to farming and the related food and agriculture supply chains. For example, about $25 billion has been invested into the ag-food technology sector since 2012, according to data compiled by Finistere Ventures.

The coronavirus pandemic can serve as an important inflection point and catalyst to take the next needed step in the evolution of technology and agriculture, which is the adoption of tech on the farm in significant scale.

A good place to start in achieving this goal is with the 2020 FarmTech Landscape report authored by Seana Day, a partner at the Better Food Ventures investment firm and the Mixing Bowl, a California-based organization devoted to bringing together the various stakeholders, including technology providers and farmers, around the topic of technology and agriculture.

Day makes a valuable contribution with her report, astutely pointing out that it’s time to segment out the many different sectors that fall under the huge AgTech umbrella. She suggests using the term FarmTech as a way to orient and focus us on the various technological innovations directly applicable to farming and farmers. I agree with her, particularly as it pertains to using technology to help solve the growing farm labor shortage problem.

(You can review Seana Day’s 2020 FarmTech Landscape report, which I strongly recommend reading, here.)

FarmTech needs to be the organizing focus for addressing the critical farm labor shortage from a technological approach because it directly addresses the specific aspects of technology that can be implemented on the farm.

With that established, we now need to use the coronavirus pandemic and the increased attention it’s put on farming and agriculture as the catalyst to take FarmTech to the next needed stage, which is the more widespread adoption of the various available technologies on the farm.

In order to achieve the needed goal of more rapid adoption of FarmTech at the farm level, we need to act boldly and rapidly in a number of ways, including these five.

Eliminate silos: We need more and better communication between FarmTech innovators and farmers. Many farmers know little about all the innovation going on in the farm technology sector, and among those farmers who are aware of it, there tends to be a perception that the technologists have a limited understanding of their needs. It’s time to eliminate the separate technologist and farmer silos because in order for FarmTech to succeed, its practitioners need an ultimate customer. That ultimate customer is the farmer.

FarmTech diffusion: We also need a “Silicon Central Valley” in California and “Silicon Prairies” in the Midwest in order to speed up the adoption of technology from startups and corporates to farmers. It will help the process greatly if the innovation and technology is located physically, at least in part, where farmers live, where farms are located, and where the seeds are planted and the crops are grown.

Agents of adoption: We also need agents of adoption. I think university farm extension specialists, which exist in farming regions throughout the US, are key to this effort because they’re particularly well-suited to communicate innovation from the lab to the farm. They also have existing relationships with farmers, which is key. Farmers trust them. If we can figure out a way to enlist these folks in the process of bringing technology from both research universities and private enterprises to farmers, it will serve us well in accelerating the adoption of FarmTech on the farm.

Government involvement: The federal government through USDA needs to get in the game. I suggest USDA offer grants and interest-free loans to farmers who agree to test various new technologies on the farm. FarmTech costs remain high and this will provide a way to lower the risk for farmers. It’s in the national interest for the government to do this because the farm labor shortage poses a direct threat to domestic food security in our country. The grant and loan process needs to be very simple and must not get in the way of innovation by creating a lot of red tape for farmers and FarmTech innovators.

Software first: FarmTech innovators also need to put a greater emphasis on how technology can help farmers at the most basic levels by creating more and better software that runs on existing devices like smartphones, laptop computers and tablets. This means focusing more on software and less on hardware right now. Keep it basic. Most farmers have become very proficient at using these devices. Software that runs on these devices and focuses on the basic needs of farmers is the perfect entry-point in the goal of increasing FarmTech adoption by farmers. Many FarmTech innovators are doing this but more and better software and increased efforts to get it into the hands of farmers is required.

The labor shortage on the farm is real and growing. Legislation is one-leg of the two-legged solution stool. However, it isn’t fast-coming nor will it, if and when it comes, provide a total solution to the problem.

The second-leg of the stool is technology. Innovation and advancement in FarmTech has been substantial. Now is the time to put a major emphasis on taking it to the farm.

MJDOA Magazine columnist and contributing editor Victor Martino is founder/CEO of Third Wave Strategies, a strategic marketing and business development firm specializing in the food and agribusiness industries. You can contact him at victormartino415@gmail.com.