Are You Getting Left Behind by Farm Tech? | The Granary

00:00:00 Is technology adoption, creating a farming chasm between the adopters and the non-ad adopters. Are you a fast adopter, early adopter, 00:00:06 late adopter, non-ad adopter? We're talking about technology adoption on the farm and the problem that creates if you don't adopt technology 00:00:13 soon enough in this episode of the Graver, you Ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? 00:00:19 And the best part, you are invited. So pour yourself a drink, grab a snack. Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the greenery. 00:00:32 Hey guys. Alright Guys, you just heard the topic. We've got a pretty big technological advance going on. Everybody said that for a long, long time. 00:00:46 But truly things have happened faster. You are using drones on your farm. You are using drones to plant, 00:00:51 you are using drones to do all kinds of stuff. Um, there's people that are younger and they obviously understand this. 00:00:58 There's people that are still in this game that are 70, 75 years old that probably they might still be using their flip phone. 00:01:05 Is it creating a farming chasm? That's the question we're gonna have here in this episode of the Greenwood. 00:01:09 By the way, we're joined by our friend Chase Garner. Chase is with Spring Tech, uh, sponsor of this episode, and a business partner of Extreme Ag. 00:01:16 We love the people of spray tech. Thank you for being here. Mr. Garner, all the way up from Arkansas. Yep. All right. 00:01:22 You're the young guy. I wanna give the young guy approach to when you go to the field 00:01:26 and you're like, oh man, this person's way behind. But before I do that, is farming now the adopters of a technology and the non 00:01:33 of technology, or maybe has it always been? I think it's always been that way to a certain extent. And you know, you gotta look, in the last 20 years, 00:01:40 what we've done in 20 years, we've got auto steers, you know, we didn't have that. 2003. 2004 is about when that was coming out. 00:01:47 Variable rate technology on FERC fertility. That's about when all that kicked off. Planters started variable rate. 00:01:52 And see, technology's been constantly evolving. Now everybody's doing variable rate fertilized, right. You know, and all this type thing. And now we're starting 00:01:59 to see more AI stuff. You got your drones, you got more things on your planters, and it's just probably unlimited. 00:02:04 What we're gonna see in the next few years, we've Always had this thing. I mean, you're now, uh, old enough to look back 00:02:11 and say, I remember when we thought this was a big innovation. I remember we thought this was a big innovation. 00:02:14 And the point is when we say, oh, well it's, it's changing fast. I'm not sure it's changing any 00:02:19 faster than it was 30 years ago. No, I agree. And we, we sit here, you talk about the topic. I've been thinking about that this morning. 00:02:25 The technological changes have always happened. Now they're becoming more web-based, more cloud-based, uh, more electrical, things like that. 00:02:33 So it is ramping up a little bit away from a mechanical innovation, but mechanical innovations are still technological innovations. 00:02:40 Right. And so this has always been going on, but the technology that's coming now is it, it doesn't require a wrench, 00:02:49 it requires a computer to fix it. And I think that's what the difference is that everybody looks at. 00:02:53 But as long as technology provides an ROI, I want to embrace all of it. Right. By the way, the curve, you know, they, 00:03:01 they taught me this in a sales class when I was in ag sales 4 31 in 1991, about the early adopter, you know, 00:03:09 the experimental and all that. And then, then there's the people that, you know, obviously are obvious. 00:03:15 They're still no offense, but they're all watching the show anyhow. Uh, that was funny. 00:03:19 Wasn't where, where are you? Are you one of the early adopters? Are you the middle guy or are you the never 00:03:25 adopter? Where are you? Yeah, So everybody Thinks 'cause you're young, you're supposed to be. 00:03:29 Yeah man, I'm using latest technology. You got the Whitney, you got the thing on your watch. But are you really at the cutting edge 00:03:34 of technology adoption? Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is we have to be efficient. 00:03:38 Now. That's the biggest thing. We have to have an ROI at the end of the year. We have to be very efficient in 00:03:43 what we're doing with technology. We can have the best technology in the world. We have to be able to read the data that comes with it. 00:03:49 Mm-hmm. Um, and I think, you know, with that, um, when we're using this technology, the companies that, that are providing the technology that we're using, 00:04:00 you know, we have to look at the big picture of, you know, what data are we getting with them. 00:04:04 You know, how is this helping the farm? What about the biggest thing, Johnny, that you are like, Hey, the one thing that I, the innovation in the last 10, 00:04:14 20 years, whatever is, is the one that I think I couldn't farm without. Whew. That's a tough one. 00:04:19 I would say, um, a lot of the technology investments in the planters that we have, the high speed planters, how accurate they are, 00:04:26 how they can change on the go. So many different variables on the planter from two by two infer changing. 00:04:32 Yeah. Hydraulic down pressure. We couldn't do that without the technology that we have and access to. 00:04:36 And I would say tie all that in together. The technology we have at our fingertips and our cell phone. You know, that's the big thing the day 00:04:43 that we can have instantly anywhere we are and see any tractor running, any soil sample, any sap sample, tissue sample, instant data coming back 00:04:51 that allows us to make decisions on the go and we smile On your employees. John. Uh, Matt does that. Yeah. 00:04:56 Somebody's always employees on his Phone. Yeah, but you gotta think 20 years ago we didn't have that. 00:04:59 Right. 10 years ago we really didn't have a lot of this. But now we do. And, and a lot 00:05:03 of it's just gonna evolve that much faster. And that's gonna what, that's what's gonna allow I think, technology to, to advance in the speed 00:05:09 it's going to the next few years. Is it too much? No. Is it too much Gene? Uh, it used to be, uh, my dad resisted a lot of that. 00:05:18 He's an old fashioned conservative guy. That's not a criticism. Just an observation. And I remember when people started to have the, uh, 00:05:25 header height control on the corn heads. Yeah, of course. We've always had it on the bean head. You, well, not always, but my wife, we have, 00:05:30 and when I first started farming, we didn't have hitter height control on the corn head. And then when we went from 38 inch rows to 30 inch rows, 00:05:36 it just automatically came on the head we bought. Hmm. And he started using it and he thought this is pretty okay. 00:05:42 And I still remember the day that he got outta the combine because the hitter height control broke on the corn head. 00:05:48 And he said, you know, a few years ago I couldn't imagine that we needed this. And now this is a shutdown down breakdown 00:05:52 because we're not more donating more to this is fixed. Yeah, right. I'm like, holy cow, you wanna talk about a technological leap forward. 00:05:58 Yeah. Right. That was a transition point right there. And I Made life Easier. Made his life easier. 00:06:03 And I think that's a good point. Once they see it, no matter the generation or the age, they realize how important it is. 00:06:08 My granddad, when I was, when he was in his seventies in 2001, we started variable rate fertilized. 00:06:12 He always spread the fertilizer on the farm. And I told 'em, we're gonna start variable rating, so we gotta make two passes. 00:06:17 'cause we had a single bin truck. I thought he would let me drive the truck. He made me sit in the passenger seat 00:06:22 with my laptop and controllers. I ran all the prescriptions and everything in the background. The controllers. Yeah. He still drove the truck up 00:06:28 and down through the field because he wanted to still do his job. And he was eat up with how we were variable rating 00:06:32 and saving money by doing that. At first he was like, this is gonna cost us money 'cause we're not putting out the fertility like we used to. 00:06:37 Mm-hmm. Then he realized we're putting it where it needs to be. Mm-hmm. But I'm just saying, you got people that got, uh, 00:06:42 you gotta have an open mind, I guess is where I was going. 'cause Kelly's dad's saying 00:06:45 that just reminded me of what my granddad told me then. 'cause he was eat up with it and he wanted to do it every day. 00:06:49 And of course we went to a two bin truck and now you got, you know, We said that, you know, we said 00:06:54 that we opened is the creating a chasm when you go to farms from Texas, North Carolina as your spray tech territory. 00:07:00 Um, I don't know that the chasm is that great because it kind of is if you don't adopt at some point, like you said, variable rate, 00:07:07 if your margins are $8 an acre at this point or break, even if you're not doing that, the Casm oil lasts for a year or two and then you're not visits. Yeah, 00:07:16 Yeah, yeah. Well When I started on the farm when I was younger, we had the brown box specialist GPS. 00:07:23 Yeah. Y'all remember that? Yeah. Now we can punch it right there on the screen. Mm-hmm. You know, that's how far we come, you know, 00:07:30 and I was out of ag for, you know, six years. Right. And just in six years how far we came it, it's, it's amazing. 00:07:37 Um, they're talking yield maps when yield maps first come out, you know. Um, I was talking to Matt about the yield maps 00:07:44 and he said when they first come out, um, a combine had issues with the yield maps. Well he just told 'em to keep cutting. 00:07:50 Well, at the end of the year, him and Lane are sitting down talking about their yield. Yeah. Well they're looking at their yield maps and, 00:07:57 and lane's like, well we just kept cutting. It was, it wasn't, it wasn't working. Mm-hmm. We just kept cutting. Now the yield map, you know, 00:08:04 if the combine's having problems with the yield map, they're gonna stop their operation. They're gonna fix it. Well, because they use that data. It's not just because, 00:08:10 because you can say, oh, well if it's just about the yield, you know, measure how many truckloads come off that field. 00:08:15 They look at it and say, we make so many decisions based on that, that piece of technology in the cab. 00:08:22 Now we're hamstrung for decision making. We drilled our variable rate prescriptions for seeding and nitrogen off of that yield map. 00:08:28 Yep. It's important. Yeah. It's important. Data has to be Right. Are there non-ad adopters that are still in business? 00:08:33 Yes. Yes. Will they be here 10 years from now? Um, well we had the previous episode with Jason Mock. He said that he doesn't maybe need all 00:08:41 that technology to do things. He needs to find efficiency in other areas. So there's no absolutes. 00:08:47 Some of them will be here, but the people that are embracing the technology becoming more efficient and creating an ROI, if you're creating a bigger ROI, 00:08:54 you're gonna be the one that's still here. So if you're behind the times and that ROI isn't there, you could get swept up, 00:09:00 But you can do so much now with the technology, you can do work orders through John Deere ops. It can tell you exactly how many ounces 00:09:06 of every chemical you're p**s to spray for the week. It sends the work orders to the sprayers. The guys know where to go. They know what wreck's going 00:09:12 where, but at the end of the day, it tells the, the farm owner, the operator there, how much to order. And you're not buying any extra. 00:09:18 You know exactly what it is. And you can track that. It helps you track your expenses and you know, you just play into all that. 00:09:24 And, and technology's just not changing on the equipment side. It's changing on the, uh, adjuvant side and everything else. 00:09:30 They've got adjuvant that we use this year on our farm. It has, I know, three main things that we're looking for. All in one used to, 00:09:36 we'd have to put three different products. Yeah. And you know now how many's in the adjuvant, the full tech avant Oh, there's several components. 00:09:42 Yeah. Seven, eight different things. Something seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just talking about you thinking how that's changing and, you know, 00:09:47 you take seed technology changed without the, whether it's in the equipment side or whatever. It's, it's been a big, it's an 00:09:53 evolution that we need to keep happening. When I Ask a question about the chasm, the truth is, uh, it's hard to not, it, it, it'd be hard to get left behind 00:10:00 because some of the stuff, it just is there, your products, I, I can't, if I use your products, they're already there. 00:10:06 It's not like there's the version of it. Like here's the stuff that sucks from 1980 and here's the stuff that's modern. 00:10:11 Which one do you want? It doesn't matter. There's no 1 19 80 version anymore. Yep. Yeah. But I don't think Kelly would ever 00:10:16 go back without auto steer. Right. But when we first got auto steer, we had some hiccups. 00:10:20 You know, LA when we first got it Yeah. Last, last year, we had a couple of days where it was almost like a blackout 00:10:24 where auto steer wasn't work and we couldn't figure out how to plant or spray. You know, it shuts down the operation on almost 00:10:29 'cause we're so dependent on it, but we're so efficient is the reason we want it. But if the marker broke on the planter six years ago Yeah. 00:10:35 Eight years ago, we'd have to stop planting too. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that, that just happens. I can't, I can't imagine 00:10:41 that we have planters without markers. Yeah. And, and uh, the John Deere and hydro boards we use, we have to use the auto steer. 00:10:46 'cause you can't see where you've been 'cause of the no-till. The technology is great. 00:10:50 Chase, just yesterday we were doing a recording and I made the point after the camera shut off to Johnny that he really only works about six weeks a year. 00:10:59 And even that's not really work. They just sit in a piece of equipment that steers itself has nothing to do with our topic. 00:11:04 I just wanted to bring up one more time how I did that. Yeah. And you liked it. Yeah. I thought it was hilarious time. Yeah. 00:11:14 Anyway, um, on the, on the chasm, do you wonder if you're aging out? Because it's, it, my phone did an update last week 00:11:24 and I was p****d off for a date because I couldn't figure something out. Do you what Sometimes when I start to be that old man 00:11:28 that's like screaming at the clouds or something. Yeah. Updates on equipment is always usually a, a big hiccup in the operation. 00:11:34 We'll show up in the mornings and somebody go out there and update something and just like you said, they can't figure out how to work the 00:11:38 machine again for a day or two. But if you don't have that and if you don't constantly have the next thing coming, you, 00:11:44 you really don't realize what's out there for you to use. Because the, the technology 00:11:49 that's here today is gonna change so much in the next two or three years is gonna be unreal. 00:11:52 You know, autonomous tractors and all that stuff is here. Yeah. It's just not being implemented on our farms yet. 00:11:58 And it's coming and it's, it might not work as well where we are in West Tennessee, but we're different places like where Kelly 00:12:04 and different parts of Iowa where it's flat, which Kelly's not flat for sure. But that could be interesting itself. 00:12:08 It's supposed to stop at obstacles where it's gonna drive up to the whole field. That's a hill and stop. So it's gonna 00:12:13 Be hits right there. But where he farms, I, I point this out all the time. Chase, if we had the kind of hills we wouldn't be farming, 00:12:19 put a chairlift on it If it was in Indiana, you know, what happened is I was on the phone before I ever went to his farm and I was looking the map 00:12:26 and I said, Hey, I'm leaving Des Moines. I was here for business. I said, I kind of, I said, is there some really hilly fields? 00:12:32 Like right behind your farms? He says, oh, not just there. Yeah. They're, they're everywhere. 00:12:36 That's all we farm. And so it's really different. Yeah. I get really nervous watching some of his videos, his combines. 00:12:41 Yeah. Well just think about the Hillco kits, how that be. I Mean it's technology right there. Yeah. 00:12:45 It's every part of our operations technology now. Yeah. Side hill. So the, the, the machine isn't tipping over and falling down the hill. 00:12:52 Right. The machine tips over 18 degrees. Well, it's a tip over. It, it the Yeah. The axle it tip. Yes. It, it tips 18 degrees to lean into the hill. 00:13:00 So you have a level threshing surface. Right. 18 degrees is about half as much as it needs to be on most of it fields. 00:13:05 Yeah. Needs to be about 40. Yeah. So anyway, you worry about getting left behind. I do Uhoh. I was thinking about that when you said, it made me laugh. 00:13:12 I remember when I was young and we had the VCR and, uh, my mom and dad couldn't set the VCR, so I had to do it. 00:13:18 And I'm like, I'll never be like that. I will know how to do this stuff. And that's the technological, 00:13:21 I I think I'm definitely left behind. 'cause I'm constantly asking Vern, constantly asking cheese, asking Caitlyn, asking Evans. 00:13:28 Yeah. I can't, yeah. Can't do anything that I, I I, we if come outta the classic, I handed my cell phone to Lane Miles. 00:13:35 I said, you know how last year come outta classic You had to fix some stuff. You gotta fix some more stuff for me. Yes. 00:13:39 Because you'd almost start charging you. I said you could. No, it amazes me what 00:13:45 the younger generation knows how to do. 'cause I can't figure it out. Yeah. Well obviously that's the tough part. 00:13:50 Is that it, you think, you think you're keeping up and then it dawns you that I couldn't figure out how to access my email. 00:13:56 So I hit on my phone to somebody else and said, figure this out. You Know, I think, I think cameras 00:14:00 and ag are, are so important right now. Cameras on, you know, combines Right. Drones. Yeah. Um, sprayers, all of those things. 00:14:09 You know, being able to put a drone in the air and do your stand counts now. That's huge. That's, that's huge. 00:14:14 You don't have to go out in the field. I can remember when I used to do stand counts. We'd take a side by side, run down the roads, 00:14:20 stop in the field, you know, and do our, do our rope and, and get our stand count that way. 00:14:26 Now you can throw a drone in the air and it runs itself. All you have to do is control it there and back. 00:14:32 And, uh, it gets your stand counts and it's efficient. Um, you can do heat units in your field. They're, they're projecting yield with those drones now. 00:14:40 I mean that's, that's important there. And then talking the combine and sprayer side, I feel like they're, yeah. 00:14:46 You know, um, with nowadays with, uh, with Hired helps, they may not have as much experience in ag as they need to have when you hire 'em, 00:14:56 but with those cameras, you know, it's, it's real time data right there at your fingertips, you know, and they could see what's going on in 00:15:03 that whole machine while they're running it. So, and I feel like they'll learn a little bit faster, you know? 00:15:08 Yeah. Whereas when I was a kid, it was, uh, get on there and go, it wasn't a camera sitting there or any of that. 00:15:15 It was just get and go figure It out. Figure it out. Yep. We shot a video in June at your 00:15:20 place with, uh, wind Grove doing drones. And then it was a year before that at year Place. It's getting to where now. I don't know that we need to be. 00:15:30 I'm not sure that a year from now it's gonna be some new news that we cover what drones are doing in ag. 00:15:36 I mean, I, I've been there harvesting. Yeah. 'cause it was, it was neat that we talked about they're doing recon. 00:15:42 Yeah. Scan counts. Yeah. Uh, check in for problems. Then it was neat that they're, you're putting a product in there seed or Yeah. 00:15:48 Fertility or insecticide or fungicide. I, I, I shouldn't say this because they will, but I don't know what else they could do, uh, 00:15:55 other than like you say harvest. But I didn't know what else they could do with tractors. And I didn't know. I mean, yeah. 00:15:59 It just, it never ceases to amaze me to advance us. What about the payback? Because to be honest, uh, and, 00:16:05 and I'm not like the closed-minded. We've talked about this. We just are at Commodity Classic. You go up by any of the equipment companies, 00:16:12 they're all there and they literally, they have multiples of millions of dollars of stuff sitting there. 00:16:18 And at some point you're like, yeah, this does everything and it's amazing and the technology in this thing 00:16:22 and the horsepower and all that, but the payback, I, I mean, did John Deere 40 20 have a bigger payback per dollar invest 00:16:30 in it than this new million dollar piece of equipment? I almost think that it did. That's where I'm starting to wonder about is the actual is, in other words, 00:16:38 innovation has a bigger payback. The wheel was a bigger new deal. Yep. Than the thing that we just invented. Right. 00:16:46 Because the first big innovation is like, holy crap, we went from horses to a tractor now going to now to the lead forward. 00:16:52 Yeah. Yeah. Now going to the modern tractor that's a million dollars. And it, you know, it has everything in it. 00:16:59 Like man, that's, that's gradations of innovation. But is the payback there? I would think it is in efficiency. 00:17:06 You know, that's one of the big things I can see. 'cause you go back to tillage, there's not a lot of tillage where we live now, but I know where Matt 00:17:12 and them are and where Chase lives. They till everything. If you didn't have GPS, how much overlap would you have all day long? 00:17:17 Two, three foot every pass. You're talking thousands of passes and mats running a dozen tractors doing tillage. 00:17:23 You could probably eliminate one or two tractors. Just amount of overlapping in a day. Yeah. And he's not gonna do that. He, 00:17:28 he's gotta be able to work more ground. So he's gotta have that. But I think the efficiency piece and then knowing what might have happened in, 00:17:34 in a growing season, be able to go back and look at data from the planters or from the combines and overlap. 00:17:40 We maybe spray data to figure out what might have happened, what went wrong. If anything, the data is what's gonna be the future 00:17:46 of making decisions though. And so I I think the efficiency piece is, is where it's at though. 00:17:51 You know, you could, you could take a 300 horse tractor 30 years ago and a 300 horse tractor today 00:17:55 and you're gonna get a lot more outta the tractor today just because of the, mainly the GPS side 00:17:59 of it's one of the big reasons. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I make the boil time. I, I say I don't run equipment like you guys, 00:18:04 but my little utility tractor is and easily double the capability of a tractor I grew up operate. 00:18:11 Yeah, absolutely. You know, uh, the, the what it can do per horsepower. Uh, just the ease of the hydraulic user for this capability. 00:18:19 Yeah. Hydraulic capability. Yeah. But you know, you took a punch at me earlier. I don't think I would trust you and one of my combines 00:18:24 unless we had the technology we have on it today. Well, But you wouldn't with the technology you have. Right. I could always shut the combine off. Well, right. 00:18:32 And what really you gotta admit, what you really gotta admit is you could put a monkey in there because the thing steers itself. That's is what you 00:18:39 Really say. That's why I chose You. Right. I appreci appreciate that. Don't you laugh at that. Getting chase, Chase. You go and see these farms. 00:18:47 What strikes you? You know, you're a younger guy, you're supposed to be more adept at technology. You probably are just because, you know, you grew up 00:18:54 with a thing in your hands that is new to us. Whatever. You go on somebody's farm from your territory in Texas to North Carolina. 00:19:01 What strikes you? I would say the different ways that the, the guys are farming. Mm-hmm. From, from, you know, even in Arkansas, you know, I, 00:19:11 I do the whole state of Arkansas and just from, from Matt's operation to the, to the top of the state, from, from tip to tip there is different 00:19:21 in my area, you don't see many DB planters, any pool type planters. You go to North Arkansas 00:19:26 and you'll see some pool type planters there. I had Never seen a planter that hooked onto the three point hitch until I came 00:19:32 to Ton man Miles farm. I didn't know that there was a planter that unless it was like a little four row 00:19:36 that you're putting in a food plot for deer hunting. I didn't know that there was actual scale size large planters that just hooked up to the back 00:19:44 of the tractor as a three. And then the way they fold, the way they stack up and stuff, you don't, 00:19:48 You don't see that Mo Wade is his, is Matt's enemy. They want something light that can pick up on the end turn and go right back down of 00:19:54 The irrigation. He's not, he's Not no telling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And our fair irrigation, you know, we can't plant plant our ends. 00:19:59 Right. Yeah. Um, We did a video at, uh, Kelly's last summer where Kelly and I spent five to $7 million putting all some sort 00:20:10 of drip irrigation in for Matt. And we thought it was a great idea. We liked spending Matt's money. Do you, 00:20:16 Oh, Do you like telling him all things he should do with his money? Yeah, but I want him to 00:20:20 have an ROI at the end of the year. See We don't care about that. So we just really enjoy, 00:20:24 Well, I won't have a job, so, So technology, um, planter type technology, what strikes you? So that's, uh, talking about technology, I never knew 00:20:34 that a planter, other things I see when you go to your farms, we did a thing at Field Day where a bunch of non-ag people came to Kelly's 00:20:41 and just for fun, you know, the, the fashion designers from Seattle were there and they were really, they were very open-minded. 00:20:46 They loved what they were learning and all that. And I said, okay, now they're getting ready to show you all the technology and you've just done it. 00:20:52 I said, yeah. And I said, I like to do a fun thing with people from the suburbs. I said, how much you think this unit costs? 00:20:57 I said, the planter and that tractor. And they said, boy, we were just talking about that. And he said, my buddy and I, 00:21:02 we were thinking probably two 50 or $300,000. I said, yeah, you're a quarter of the way there. And they said, what? That's about a one 00:21:10 to $1.1 million, uh, system right there. Tractor and implement. Yeah. And all the tack and all that usually strikes people. Yeah. 00:21:16 Yeah. Um, I wonder sometimes whether if I'm gonna be the one left out, um, I, I'd say the other one that when I think of it, 00:21:23 Johnny keeps going through efficiency. Efficiency, the problem at some point, efficiency gains don't make you as much money. 00:21:31 I mean, again, the wheel was a great big innovation. This next thing, I don't know that creating one more little percent of efficiency, if that's 00:21:39 where we are, the payback gets lesser and lesser. Well, And mine and Johnny's area look at cotton technology. Look how efficient we are now 00:21:46 with cotton talking, the baler pickers stuff. The Bayler picker. The baler picker. Now compared to having a module builder and bowl buggies 00:21:53 and a basket picker, we Don't know what it is. Well, Buggy, a module builder used to make the big square bales big at the end the field. 00:22:00 Yeah. So you had one or two guys on it. You had a bowl buggy that the picker would dump in it would take it and dump it. 00:22:05 In the module builder, you had probably four or five guys. Now one guy can do the same. 00:22:09 That one guy with one guy, one guy can do it. Now that's The wheel right there. Yeah, 00:22:13 that is. Yeah. How long is it taken for that? Uh, 20 years. 2010. I think it's kinda when that came out. So 15 years. 00:22:20 But before that, you know, before that we had trailers that held seven to 10 bells of cotton. 00:22:25 So it's, it's really changed. The first cotton picker was on the, on the tractor. Yeah. So the technology's changed. 00:22:31 I don't, I'm like y'all, I don't know where it's gonna stop on the evolution of the harvest equipment, but we saw some really neat things 00:22:36 at Commodity Classic this year on where they're gonna really make things more efficient with the combine, talking to the grain 00:22:41 cart and stuff like that. And then, you know, I just, the efficiency piece is probably gonna plateau out at some at some point. 00:22:48 But then you got the autonomous piece coming too. So One thing I would say is don't say they can't make it any better. 00:22:55 Right, right. Thinking can they continue to, I'm, you know, I, the, the greatest piece 00:23:00 of technology we have on the farm is the cell phone. Mm. To me in my, the second greatest piece are the road shutoffs 00:23:06 that like downforce and then the uh, the variable rate. Yeah. All those, those things are the greatest ROIs that we have. 00:23:14 But you got one piece of equipment doing all of 'em. That's what's crazy. Yeah. You got a planter that's able to do every one of those. We just 00:23:19 Illustrated this in February when your friend Matt was here, we took a ride and my wife's 71 Chevy Cheyenne, and yeah, it's cool truck 00:23:25 and by guy everybody turns their head and says, oh, it's just a cool truck. But when they screw up and they say things 00:23:30 like, don't make come on. I used to like, no, they nick 'em a lot better. Matt and I got stuck in an inch of mud with that truck. 00:23:39 My modern 2023 F-150. It wouldn't even be a concern. I push one little button and I go through whatever. It's a cool old truck, but Johnny 00:23:47 doesn't wanna drive that back to Jackson. He just assumed get in that three quarter Every time. But he, 00:23:54 But he didn't seats he didn't see. And more room. And yes, I love my oh six Monster truck, but I drove the F two 50 here. 00:24:01 We didn't drive the monster truck. Exactly. The technology's nice. Yeah, absolutely. It is. And, and I mean, it's that way. Everything. 00:24:08 Again, I'm gonna go back to the efficiency gains. That's cool. But when is it, when is that not enough to justify the expense of new technology? 00:24:14 You know, you're, you're, you're gaining, you're not going from horse to 40 20. You're going from, you know, 00:24:21 this gradation to this radiation. I don't know. I don't know. Uh, I don't know that I necessarily agree. 00:24:27 I thought that auto steer was a luxury when it came out. Yeah. Well now when we don't have the markers on the 00:24:32 planners and we do things like that, there's a definite payback there. And I'll tell you at the end of the day, you're not 00:24:36 as fatigued when you can, when you can hit the button and then you can also look, turn around, look at the planter. 00:24:41 Yeah. You can look at things. You're more, you're more aware of things are going on because you're not having, 00:24:45 that's one less thing you have to pay attention to. Understood. And, and then like the rose shutoffs for us, we saved 10% of the seed, you know, in, in my hills 00:24:53 with all the crooked corners and the contours, things like that. Plus the double planted corn yields half at best. 00:25:00 And so those, there, there's a real ROI there, you know, Evans' research is, the hydraulic downforce is nine 00:25:06 and a half bushel per, you know, the, and that just continues to pay every year the thing, the variable rate that continues to pay every year. 00:25:13 So like the scales of efficiency that we're finding and o obviously we have all those things now, but it, it just continues to get better. 00:25:21 And that's one of the people talk about, well we're not making as much as we used to then and stuff, but all of these things allow us 00:25:28 to cover more acres in a more efficient manner, which is the reason that we can still make a living today. And while 00:25:32 We're talking about planters, I don't think we could have the size planters we have today without technology. 00:25:36 Because when I was a kid we had an eight row planter and it had eight lights in a cab that would light up if one of 'em wasn't working. 00:25:42 Right. Yep. Can you imagine 120 foot planter without technology? Yeah. Because you're going to the 00:25:46 Lights. Could you imagine a 60 foot marker Right. Trying to keep you, if you didn't have auto steer, it wouldn't work. 00:25:51 You'd break it off every time you went across the field. But where I'm going with that is, is without 00:25:55 that technology, you couldn't have the size equipment we have today and we wouldn't be able 00:25:59 to farm on the scale we are today. Well, Can you imagine in my fields, 'cause I've done this, our 60 foot planters 00:26:04 with the 30 foot marker hanging out there, it's rubbing in the dirt. That's what breaks it. Yeah. Yeah. 00:26:09 It catches when goes down with the Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Well just, just think with sprayers not how much money you're saving there 00:26:15 with chemical being inefficient there. Well the, when part of film shuts off, 'cause again, you're not overlapping 00:26:20 and all that kind of thing. Yeah. It used to be I was a big deal on the foam. The foam marker. Yeah. Like oh. 00:26:25 And now I know it used to be you just were Yeah. Counting rows or guessing. Yeah. Seriously. Mike, Mike Busick wearing his shirt today. 00:26:32 My good friend has a chemical company and I have a little bit of a problem with that by the way. He's not painting to be here. 00:26:37 Why are we wearing his shirt on camera? I like the shirts. I don't like him well enough 00:26:41 to have his shirt here for three. Busing doesn't like the shutoffs on the sprayer 'cause he sells less chemical. 00:26:46 Yeah, yeah. Right, Right. If you're, if you're in the business to sell the inputs, you like to have as much of that stuff blow, 00:26:52 don't tell anybody our little secret here. Do to us. No, I really like when that spray tech stuff just gets blown out. 00:26:56 Everybody. I use all the full Technic. You know, it, I get a lot of, I get a lot of kickback when I go to a farmer 00:27:02 and I say, look, I said, I know you're probably putting two, three tank three, two or three jugs in the tank. 00:27:07 Let's do one. Yeah. Let's be more efficient there. And then I tell him he can treat us his, uh, nurse trailer and then that takes a step out of the field. 00:27:15 Yeah, yeah. And, and we're being way more efficient in that aspect too. Yeah. So that's what 00:27:20 All about. But you're not gonna make big bonuses if you're telling people to use less stuff. You need some more stuff. 00:27:25 Well, it all works out then. Yeah. It all works out in the end. Um, We asked the question, is 00:27:32 technology creating farming Canada? And I think we need to visit this topic a lot because of technology continues 00:27:36 to come from companies like Spray Tech, our friend Chase Garner. I, all joking aside, he doesn't wanna oversell you stuff. 00:27:41 He wants to sell you the right amount stuff to make it work. So go to, if they wanna learn 00:27:44 more about spray tech, where do they go? Uh, www.spraytech.com. Got, and by the way, the question that, uh, 00:27:50 my friend Kelly said is, don't ever do the thing they'll never, this will never get any better. 00:27:54 Yeah. They an old famous footage, Parnelli Jones broke 150 miles per hour at the Smar Speedway and they said they'll never go any faster than that now 00:28:03 235 miles per hour. And they're able to go faster than that except for they put limiters on governors on us. 00:28:08 They don't. Anyway, that's the question. We talked about technology and, and at the farm, the creating the chasm. 00:28:12 Are you adopting? Are you an early adopter? You late adopter? The point is, it's easier for you to adopt now than ever. 00:28:17 Uh, look at what our friend Johnny said. It's so easy. Even a monkey can sit in that combine, which is why he said he'd let me do it. 00:28:22 Anyway. If you wanna join these conversations, we always have a lot of fun. We keep things like, because 00:28:26 we want it to be enjoyable for you. Pull up a chair, figuratively, and you joining us here at the Greenery. 00:28:30 Plenty of episodes like this out there. Share them with somebody that'll enjoy, uh, just like you. And also remember, go to our YouTube 00:28:35 channel and hit subscribe. It didn't cost anything. Go on YouTube. Type in extreme ag. It's right there. All the stuff is extreme Ag Acres 00:28:41 TV and on YouTube. Till next time, cheer from the Gravers. Yeah. 00:28:46.235 --> 00:28:47.375