You
Chuck you know one big thing we're seeing out there these days is really the use of technology and improving efficiencies
just like we try to get more efficient in the office,
all our farmers are trying to get more efficient too.
What are you seeing ways that you know technology or efficiency is being had by farmers, you know, just with the equipment they're buying
It it ranges a lot. It rings a lot and the type of farm they have but you know the
It's been
said for many many years, smaller farmers have said that like GPS
doesn't help them because they don't have huge fields and stuff
If you think about it, the smaller fields have more turnaround in them than the big fields. Oh sure. Okay, and actually
with roll shutoffs they have
set up with GPS and so on and so forth. They can save seed they can save time
Basically save land in a way or use the land more efficiently may not under seeding into over seeding it
over fertilizing or under fertilizing it. The use technology of
gridding maps and things like that to that
so a circle amount of fertilizer gets put on one area of the field and heavier and other and so on and so forth
and that's a system that starts out from
basically soil samples to
planting to harvest and it all ties together. It is a
fantastic world out there and as far as technology goes and the kind of the key right now is
everyone's looking for efficiencies that way and
the cost of it's coming down. There's more people getting in
and working with that so the cost is coming down. And actually the accuracy of that is actually getting better and better.
 
And the technology is in all fields of that.
Craig, how about the dairy industry - you see anything efficiencies there?
Yeah, boy,
robotics and technology to improve efficiencies has been a buzzword, probably, for the last ten years or so.
With the robotic milkers and so on. But it goes far beyond that.
Most folks have heard of robotic milkers and that certainly is technology at its finest.
Improving efficiencies for dairy farmers, but, boy,
there are just a number of other things that are out there that that some people might not even know about.
Chuck, we've even seen some of it at some recent shows.
Basically the labor right now is such a question mark for people whether it's the cost of labor or the dependency and being able to
get the labor.
You know, they're trying to see what they can do robotic-wise, or with you know
better efficiencies. And some of that goes right down to the bedding. You know, bedding the stalls.
Feeding, you know, a feed pusher instead of a guy running up and down the alley with a broom.
So we see a lot of them. That's all stuff
we see come across our desk on a daily basis now.
You start looking at some other ways robotic arms are coming into play, you know, maybe a pre-dip or a post-dip application.
You replace a human there.
And just just all kinds of other things.
You mentioned dairy. Maybe you can talk about activity systems and heat detection systems, you know
just the heat cycles and when to properly
do things and when you talk about
cow health. You know better improving cow health being able to detect
sicknesses or illnesses earlier.
It's just amazing what this stuff does and the farmer can simply with a collar on a leg or
or neck, or ear.
It can shoot right back to their phone and give them live updates on, you know
did number 58 milk appropriately and how is she doing? And that sort of stuff right at their fingertips.
That sort of stuff is really changing the game.
Does that report like health things like their temperature and stuff like that?
Oh, absolutely.
Temperature, rumination. Things  that we wouldn't even fathom.
And and it sure is a lot more accurate than just looking and guessing. I'll tell you that.
You know one other thing that I've heard a lot about and I hate to you know use a pun here but buzzwords because it
sounds like a bee when it's buzzing by but drones. Do you know much about drones and how they're really coming into play here?
Well, I know enough about drones to be somewhat dangerous.
 
But I got somewhat
educated on them because of the use of farms like I have.
I have a tree farm. And I know a lot of tree farmers that have
like millions of trees that they fly drones over the trees and look for color differences.
And just from the pictures that they take they can tell
nutrient deficiencies and that type of thing from the sky. So they use that to throw some nitrogen down or what?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very good possibility sure. And I know looking into that
sector of it, I did learn that
in the tree industry the only use them a little bit, it's not that terribly much of a big deal.
Especially with crops like wheat,
you know huge huge farms and that kind of thing, it's almost impossible to
like run over with,
or walk it like like a long time ago,
they walk the fields looking for problems while they walk in the fields now with drones. And looking for problems
and it it's a great deal because I'm a matter of fact that ties together, but I talked about earlier about
mapping fields. That drone information is now included with all that
Information that they had before with colors of crops and stuff like that so
that gets that data gets put in and it gets put together and so you
can find out more and more about the field you're talking about.
Can they predict yields that way?
You know from what I've been told, yes. I have a hard time believing that. I'm a little bit of an old-school guy,
so I guess I have to maybe accept that. But from what I hear, yes. Actually from from the
nutrient color as such or whatever of the plant they can predict the yield of
the rest of the year, if it is going to be average. They then can predict the yield. Yes.
It's really, you know, when we talk about just upgrading equipment and the cost savings you can get or the added production.
We talked about robotics technology, talking about things like GPS and drones,
unbelievable what's out there right now to make farmers' lives easier to give them more live up-to-date, real
statistics. And, ultimately save them money, help them be more efficient and make more money. It is just incredible.
