 because most of the time, farms operate on slim margins. Chad Zimmerman is the agri-food director at the nonprofit BioSTL in St. Louis. He says there's still a gap between the new technology available and the farmers who put it to use, because many can't foot the bill to try something new on all their fields. We can't be asking them to take on more risk, to just take a decrease in their profit to accomplish somebody else's goal.